[Xapian-discuss] PHP4 support in Xapian 1.1

Olly Betts olly at survex.com
Wed Nov 28 20:55:28 GMT 2007


PHP4's "end of life" is 2007-12-31, though there may be "critical
security fixes" until 2008-08-08:

http://www.php.net/archive/2007.php#2007-07-13-1

We're currently tentatively looking at releasing Xapian 1.1.0 in March
2008, so I'm proposing we drop PHP4 support at that point.  My feeling
is that anyone wanting to cling on to PHP4 at that point is unlikely to
want to rapidly switch to a new Xapian release series anyway, so they'd
be happy staying with Xapian 1.0.x until they are ready to upgrade to
PHP5.

I think this is the right move because it allows us to improve PHP5
support without the PHP4 support getting in the way.  We can provide
better support for PHP5, and the evidence I have is that PHP5 is already
more popular with Xapian users.

I checked a few popular Linux distros, and all have dropped PHP4
support.  Ubuntu dropped it in feisty (April 2007), Debian have dropped
it in unstable and testing, Fedora dropped it in FC4 (July 2005!)

So that's the plan, unless anyone has a convincing argument why this is
a bad idea (or is willing to volunteer to maintain our PHP4 support).

Cheers,
    Olly



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