From: Dan Schaefer > Background (some of these facts may be well-known, and for that I apologize): > I'm running CentOS 5.5 on all servers, which only supports PHP 5.1.6 > CentOS 5.5 is based off RHEL 5.5 > Redhat has released RHEL 6 which supports PHP 5.3 > CentOS has not released even a beta 6 version yet that supports PHP 5.2+ > > I was having a discussion with my bosses about what PHP release we > are running on our systems. We > have a few applications and packages that require and/or will work better > with PHP 5.2+. I > understand that no matter what Linux distribution I have, I can always > download the source, compile, > and install manually. My question is, when The PHP Group develops, compiles, > and tests PHP for a > release, what distribution(s) and versions do they use? And of those, > which distribution is the most > commonly used throughout the development team? What Internet references are > there, if any, that show > the major and/or minor Linux distributions that support which version of PHP?
This issue has been discusses a few times, but it might be hard to figure out search terms to find those threads. First of all, I believe that while the official build still says it is PHP 5.1.6, many of the patches have actually been back ported. So security wise, it should be up to date. Of course that does not help you with the new features. Our experience has been that we have to compile PHP for our production servers. This is a result of several factors. One, we lease space on managed servers, where the owners only promise to keep up with the official releases and patches. Second, we are subject to a monthly PCI (Payment Card Industry) audit, which gives us 30 days after a security patch is released before it must be installed on our servers. But the auditors don't recognize the back-ports. They need to see the newest version numbers. The end result is that we compile PHP 5.2.xx and install it on each server in our leased farm every time there is a patch. The hosting provider has blocked updates for the "official" builds from the CentOS repositories. Bob McConnell -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
