Hello Andi, Tuesday, March 4, 2008, 7:51:07 AM, you wrote:
> Hi Marcus, Johannes, and all, > First of all let me say that I have no conceptual problem with replacing > the scanner with re2c. If it's cleaner, performs better and a better > maintained piece of software (let's hope Marcus doesn't get run over) > then we can move to re2c. > There are a few important things to consider though: > - There is a huge PHP/MySQL community in the far east especially in > Japan. You may not hear as much from them because they mostly don't post > on our public lists but it's large. They very much depend on multibyte > support and it works well for them (I have talked to several people in > those communities). Shift-JIS is a matter of fact for those communities. > We can't just dump them in PHP 5.3. > - We need to make sure that we have a streams story that works and > existing functionality is supported by it (sounds like this is almost > complete so probably not high risk). > - We should make sure we can achieve compatibility including supporting > functionality like declare(...) which is used by some including > multibyte guys. I haven't heard of a reason why this couldn't be > possible with RE2C. > I think all the above is doable but we shouldn't ship without > accomplishing that 100% compatibility especially telling the non-Latin > world that we will stop supporting them. > So at the end of the day it all boils down to timing. I have been > expecting Johannes to cut a beta any day now (I realize Sun acquisition > somewhat postponed his schedule). PHP 5.3 is on a pretty good track to a > good & stable release cycle. I think re-engineering a core piece of the > engine at this point adds considerable risk and would definitely prolong > the release cycle. > So while I'm supportive of embracing RE2C if we get commitment to reach > that 100% compatibility including multibyte support, I don't quite > understand the sense of urgency and why we'd want to introduce this risk > so late in the development of PHP 5.3. This is a risk the release > manager shouldn't really be willing to take. Rewriting this multibyte > support will require time and interaction with the communities that are > currently using it to make sure that it meets their needs. It will not > be a trivial project. > We can definitely work towards RE2C in parallel and as Stas said the > engine hasn't really been changing very much recently to make this hard > (we finished our todos for 5.3). We could even branch off PHP 5.4 right > after RC1 for PHP 5.3 and therefore reduce the time where this patch > would need to be maintained separately (although I think it can already > be maintained in a branch). > Let's consider all the angles in addition to wanting to get the code in > the tree asap. > Andi Give me any reason why we need 5.4 at this point? Any single one? Are you having a bet or a deal about 5.3 release date? And what is the deal, you do whatever you think goes in and that's a law? Best regards, Marcus -- PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
