On Tuesday 22 October 2002 09:17, Terence Kearns wrote: > Ideally this is true, but as so many poeple have pointed out, not every > developer has access to the ini file on their ISPs server. Indeed, > maintaining a php.ini file is already a nightmare for ISP hosting to > unspecified groups PHP users.
I cannot speak for other ISPs, only for our setup. In our environment we do have low traffic setups. These are run from Apache servers with a hacked up suexec that includes a chroot() call to the customers toplevel directory. This setup runs CGI-everything including CGI-PHP. Due to chroot, each customer gets a copy of a minimal execution environment including a copy of the PHP interpreter and a copy of php.ini. The customer can install additional software (sparc binary) including a C-Compiler or Assembler, a different PHP if she likes. Should the customer break something, we reinstall a copy of the original setup on top of this. This setup offers the advantage of highly customized configuration for the customer, extremely low maintenance cost for us, and very high grade security (no safe_mode required, security independent of PHP, affects all CGI, even resistant to access rights goofs). The price is the CGI performance penalty. Because of this we also have some mod_php setups, but these are usually dedicated (again no safe_mode) or very controlled. In these environment the customer cannot control php.ini, but has no need to as there is php_flag and php_value available from .htaccess. This includes the dreaded short_open_tag flag. And frankly, if you need XML and short_open_tag disabled, and if you need it on a hosting machine and not as a local CLI program (which I think is far more likely) and if you need to intermix XML and PHP instead of using a templating solution, and if you THEN insist on a provider with a setup that is simply broken, then I feel you deserve what you get. Really. > My main concern is that when XML > becomes very popular, trying to implement it will become a "NON-trivial" > exercise for the great unwashed. If you need to deal with XML, and you need to do it with PHP instead of XSLT, go PEAR and use the Transformer. You save yourself all the engineering and you will be independent of all short_open_tag hassles. Kristian -- PHP Development Mailing List <http://www.php.net/> To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
