PHP5 considered Beta

**Kimmo Laine** · Mar 8 '06, 03:35 PM

Re: PHP5 considered Beta

"Aziz" <no_spam@spamco .com> wrote in message
news:4789baFdub veU1@individual .net...[color=blue]
> Hi,
>
> I've recently contacted technical service of a web hosting company and
> asked them wheter or not they're gonna upgrade to PHP5 and MySQL5. Here's
> a quote from their response which confused me a little:
>
> "As php5 and mysql5 are still beta versions we don't install beta versions
> on production servers due to secure reasons, we install only current
> working versions on production servers"
>
>
> As far as I know two products are far away from being Beta releases?
> Is there any thruth in what they talk about?
>[/color]

They don't know what they are talking about. PHP 5 is far from beta. The
last PHP 5.0.0 Beta X was released early 2004, and the final php 5.0.0 was
released in July 2004, see http://fi2.php.net/ChangeLog-5.php . So PHP 5 has
been in final status for more than a year now, almost two years. Tell those
people to get their heads out of their asses and shove a beta version
there... The current and working version of php 5 is 5.1.2.

--
"En ole paha ihminen, mutta omenat ovat elinkeinoni." -Perttu Sirviö
spam@outolempi. net | Gedoon-S @ IRCnet | rot13(xvzzb@bhg byrzcv.arg)

**Tim Roberts** · Mar 9 '06, 08:15 AM

Re: PHP5 considered Beta

"Kimmo Laine" <spam@outolempi .net> wrote:
[color=blue]
>"Aziz" <no_spam@spamco .com> wrote:[color=green]
>>
>> I've recently contacted technical service of a web hosting company and
>> asked them wheter or not they're gonna upgrade to PHP5 and MySQL5. Here's
>> a quote from their response which confused me a little:
>>
>> "As php5 and mysql5 are still beta versions we don't install beta versions
>> on production servers due to secure reasons, we install only current
>> working versions on production servers"
>>
>> As far as I know two products are far away from being Beta releases?
>> Is there any thruth in what they talk about?[/color]
>
>They don't know what they are talking about. PHP 5 is far from beta. The
>last PHP 5.0.0 Beta X was released early 2004, and the final php 5.0.0 was
>released in July 2004, see http://fi2.php.net/ChangeLog-5.php . So PHP 5 has
>been in final status for more than a year now, almost two years. Tell those
>people to get their heads out of their asses and shove a beta version
>there... The current and working version of php 5 is 5.1.2.[/color]

The same thing is true of MySQL, although it is more recent. The
production release of MySQL 5 was in October, 2005.
--
- Tim Roberts, timr@probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.

**John Murtari** · Mar 9 '06, 07:35 PM

Re: PHP5 considered Beta (modules coexisting with PHP 4)

Aziz <no_spam@spamco .com> writes:
[color=blue]
> I've recently contacted technical service of a web hosting company and
> asked them wheter or not they're gonna upgrade to PHP5 and
> MySQL5. Here's a quote from their response which confused me a little:
>
> "As php5 and mysql5 are still beta versions we don't install beta
> versions on production servers due to secure reasons, we install only
> current working versions on production servers"[/color]

Well, I happen to work in tech support at a web
hosting company. Given a large installed base (and many webmasters
who don't really know how their sites work), we are careful on upgrades.
We are now offering MySQL 5 on a test basis to our customers (and if
you want to pass this on to your current provider -- if they are
running MySQL 4.1.x right now -- the upgrade is pretty painless. We
were suprised).

Regarding PHP 5, that is a different story. While I don't
agree with their 'beta' reason. I can tell you from experience when
we were doing some testing that we had some problems with backward
compatability on things like WordPress,UBB, and PHPBB. We had to pull
back to 4.x

If there are PHP developers out there, probably our
greatest frustration is the inability to run both PHP 5 & 4 as
modules on the same server (there are cgi workarounds, but not
very good). I recall when PHP 4 came out, we were able to run
old PHP 3 and PHP 4 as modules on the same Apache. It made it
MUCH easier to rollout, we told people to just change files extenstions
to .php4 to pickup the new version. Eventually, we dropped support
for PHP 3, by first changing the default handling for .php extensions
and requiring them to use .php3, and then removed entirely.

Don't know what was done with 5, but they can't coexist.
I'm still not sure if the was suppose to be a 'bug' or a 'feature'.
I can certainly say it has probably slowed rollout of 5 by shared
hosting providers for the reasons I just outlined.

I'd hope to hear a developers side of the story, and
can module 'coexistence' still be added?

--
John
_______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______
John Murtari Software Workshop Inc.
jmurtari@follow ing domain 315.635-1968(x-211) "TheBook.Co m" (TM)

Just a moment...

http://thebook.com/

**Juan José Gutiérrez de QuevedoPérez** · Mar 9 '06, 07:55 PM

Re: PHP5 considered Beta (modules coexisting with PHP 4)

El Thu, 09 Mar 2006 14:14:31 -0500
John escribió:
[color=blue]
> Regarding PHP 5, that is a different story. While I don't
> agree with their 'beta' reason. I can tell you from experience when
> we were doing some testing that we had some problems with backward
> compatability on things like WordPress,UBB, and PHPBB. We had to pull
> back to 4.x[/color]

actually, I think they didn't intend to say that php5 is beta, but
rather that it's still too new to install on their server(it sounds
as the email is from a non-native english speaker). it's the same
reasoning behind still having apache1 on a server.
[color=blue]
> [...]
> Don't know what was done with 5, but they can't coexist.
> I'm still not sure if the was suppose to be a 'bug' or a 'feature'.
> I can certainly say it has probably slowed rollout of 5 by shared
> hosting providers for the reasons I just outlined.[/color]

yes, I agree completely with you on that, upgrading to php5 is right
now a big pain, and it's not worth the risk. even simple programs can
have different behaviours on different php versions, so upgrading
everything to php5 is not a solution.

the only real solution I've found so far would be to have one server
with php4 and another with php5(I'm talking of different physical
machines), and just get your customers on one or another depending on
their php version, but it's a solution that's overkill(at least for me),
and, in my particular case, no one has asked for php5 support, and
probably more than 20 people would have to ask for it to justify the
cost of another server.
[color=blue]
> I'd hope to hear a developers side of the story, and
> can module 'coexistence' still be added?[/color]

that would be cool

--
Juan José Gutiérrez de Quevedo
Director Técnico (juanjo@iteisa. com)
ITEISA (http://www.iteisa.com)
942544036 - 637447953

**Carl Vondrick** · Mar 10 '06, 07:15 AM

Re: PHP5 considered Beta (modules coexisting with PHP 4)

John Murtari wrote:[color=blue]
> I'd hope to hear a developers side of the story, and
> can module 'coexistence' still be added?[/color]

Personally, I'm sick of the unstable PHP5 "flap." Sure--some programs
will not work correctly. But, who's fault is that? The developers of
the programs (the ones you mentioned are not great achievements, IMO).

The developers of these programs keep designing for PHP4 because they
know that hosts will not support it. This causes the hosts not to
support it because most of the software is written in PHP4. It is a
vicious circle that has to stop.

PHP5 offers many features that I simply cannot live without. Once you
use PHP5's magic methods and excellent XML support, PHP4 becomes
obsolete. There's no going back--I see the real world of PHP, and going
back to PHP4 is living the cave.

Today, I do not write code in PHP4 any more, and when I respond to
questions, I always respond in PHP5. Why should we use old and
out-dated software, when we have a free upgrade to the future?

I have stopped signing up for hosts that do not support PHP4. It has
been two years since the release of PHP5, and now talks are going on
about PHP6. Should I be held back by PHP4? No! The future is in PHP5,
and once PHP4 is no longer officially supported, what will hosts do? I
suggest that all fellow PHP programmers do the same--PHP5 will save you
time and money, and you'll be helping a good cause.

Sorry for my semi-rant, but I'm just tired of it. I write code in PHP5,
but yet I still publish on PHP4.

Carl

--
Carl Vondrick

Carl Vondrick - Columbia University

https://www.carlsoft.net

Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University, researching computer vision, machine learning, and AI applications.

usenet [at] carlsoft [dot] net

PHP5 considered Beta

PHP5 considered Beta

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