Joseph Kowalski wrote: > > I'm tempted to derail this, not because it is wrong, but because the > versioning and change control model is far from obvious. I fear a mail > discussion to resolve this will be rather painful, but lets take a shot > at it first. > > Before I even attempt that, I'd like to know the Linux model for this. > Are these components contained in any > of the major distros, and if so, what updates to these components do the > distros make in their updates. > To clarify, if this is in RedHat (I have no idea), what would they do > between RHEL4u3 and RHEL4u4 and > what would they do between RHEL4 and RHEL5 (now in late Beta).
Both RedHat and SUSE (the ones i know) deliver PHP. They seem to follow the "Designer Model": every release of either RedHat or SUSE starts off by delivering a _certain_ version of PHP5. They tend to stick with it for as long as possible, and they patch it internally. This is the reason why one ends up with versions like php-5.2.0.3.1.2b (as an example), when the PHP Group has only released PHP.5.2.0. Minor upgrades (i.e. RHEL3U3 to RHEL3U4) try to maintain compatibility. Compatibility can, in fact, always be broken by shifting the blame to the original author of software. Vendor sites which use RHEL or SUSE employ a rather large number of people who keep very busy making sure that whatever <insert-vendor-name-here> puts in their box, works. This is the explanation for support contracts which advertise products such as "Our Certified Linux RHEL3". It's been certified not to explode on startup, and that's pretty much the extent of it. RHEL or SUSE customers which want different versions of PHP (or anything else) build and support their own. For Apache, SUSE delivers mpm-prefork *or* mpm-worker -- one gets to choose at installation time which one gets installed. But, they do not coexist. Same for PHP: one can choose at installation time whether one installs PHP4 or PHP5. Upgrades between Major Releases (i.e. RHEL3 to RHEL4) are no-holds-barred: there is *no expectation whatsoever* of backwards compatibility. Everything must be reinstalled, nothing is shared, and rpm's of PHP (any version) for RHEL3 will not work on RHEL4. Nobody expects them to be compatible. --Stefan -- Stefan Teleman Sun Microsystems, Inc. Stefan.Teleman at Sun.COM
