On 29/03/11 09:40, Aryeh Gregor wrote:
On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 10:47 AM, Tim Starling
<tstarling(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
We can use features from both, using
function_exists(), like what we
do now with PHP modules.
Well, yes, if there's some reasonable fallback. It doesn't work for
features that are useless if you have to write a fallback, like
various types of syntactic sugar. For example, the first features
from PHP 5.3 release notes include namespaces, late static binding,
lambda functions and closures, NOWDOC, a ternary operator shortcut,
limited goto, and __callStatic. If Facebook didn't implement some of
those new features in Hiphop by the time we could feasibly require PHP
5.3, we wouldn't be able to use them. (Some look really nice, like
anonymous functions -- one of the things I really like about
JavaScript.)
Yes, that's true, and that's part of the reason I'm flagging this
change on the mailing list. Domas says that the HipHop team is working
on PHP 5.3 support, so maybe the issue won't come up. But yes, in
principle, I am saying that we should support HipHop even when it
means not using new features from PHP.
PHP 5.3 might be cool, but so is cutting our power usage by half (pun
intended).
-- Tim Starling