Well, we are (or I am?) focusing on the right place :) See http://php.net/imagecreatetruecolor for example. It is a manual page of function defined by php_gd2.dll on windows. It needs to be enabled in php.ini (or by dl()), but still you could find out from the manual page that the DLL that shipped with PHP 4.0.6 already contained this and all the DLLs in later versions too.
I second Goba's point of view. It might be of interest to know the version of a PECL Extension, of course,
but this could not answer the simple questiion:
Is this function/extension available with PHP xxx, and am I able (in theory)
to use this function/extension with PHP xxx.
Therefore it is really important to know, if you can (in theory) use a
particular function/extension with your installed PHP Version.
My proposal:
For _bundled_ (delivered with PHP xxx) PECL extension we should be able to
give the version info as now provided in the manual, as we do with any other
bundled extension. I am pretty sure, most users do not care about, if this
extension/functions was bundled from PECL.... From users pov this is just an
ordinary extension, not less not more.
And the version of the extensions should be available with phpinfo, no?
Of course the availability to use the extension depends wether it is
compiled in and/or enabled.
For _real_ (not delivered with PHP xxx) PECL extension:
We could provide the general info, that this extension is available throug PECL. No extension version, please. At the function level we should be able to use the same schema as for the "regular" docs. For example: extension BAR, has functions foo_1, foo_2,...., foo_n. extension/version info for foo_1 <= 2.4 extension/version info for foo_12 >= 4.9
If an extension from PECL would be delivered with PHP xxx, the extension info should change to the version info PHP xxx >=xxx
Is that nonsense? Comments?
You two are talking at the two extreams (or my flu is not fully cured yet, and I interpret it incorrectly :). For PECL extensions we should provide both the PHP release and PECL extension version numbers in the manual where applicable.
PHP versoin PECL ext. version PHP bundled PECL ext YES YES PECL ext (not in php dist) NO YES
The only NO in this table is just because we don't know... If there would be some automation we could know what PHP version that PECL ext will work with (ie. zendAPI version number, internal dependencies), then we could flip that NO to YES...
So we should provide all the information available to us, which can be used by developers when version compatibility decisions / checks need to be made. It is this simple.
Goba
