Is there an archived discussion on the MediaWiki move to PHP5 which I could read? I'm curious to see the conversation about the experiences with the move.
Like why in general.. and the benefits and such which the WIkipedia is seeing.
The only other discussion I've ever heard with regards to PHP5 was from other developers talking about how much of a letdown it was, and how much of a moving target it has been from minor revision to minor revision, the breach of promises of backwards compatability, the introduction of new oddities and not solving previous oddities etc. All negative stuff. So I'm curious to see the mediawiki team perspective.
I'd check a development mailing list, but.. apparently this _is_ the developer mailing list for mediawiki.. where else is there to look?
Like why in general.. and the benefits and such which the WIkipedia is seeing.
PHP 4 is in maintenance mode. PHP 5 is being actively developed, has many new features, and is faster in many cases. It is the latest, greatest version. IMO, there is no legitimate reason to continue developing PHP 4 code.
The only other discussion I've ever heard with regards to PHP5 was from other developers talking about how much of a letdown it was, and how much of a moving target it has been from minor revision to minor revision, the breach of promises of backwards compatability, the introduction of new oddities and not solving previous oddities etc. All negative stuff. So I'm curious to see the mediawiki team perspective.
FUD, FUD, FUD, and more FUD. PHP devs went to great ends to make PHP 5 very compatible with PHP 4. Most PHP 4 scripts ran just fine under PHP 5 without any modifications. The scripts that needed modifications needed all but a few single-liners, which could easily be found via grep. 99% of scripts that needed a heavy-lifting to work with PHP 5 were not written well to begin with. If you want to talk about PHP upgrades breaking things, you should read the developer notes about PHP 6. They plan to turn off a lot of the support for legacy PHP 4. It is kind of scary, actually. I guess it's the price one pays when a language evolves.
To answer your question, I don't recall a discussion about going from PHP 4 to 5. The devs kinda just decided it was a good idea, and rightfully so. I saw a Subversion commit with an exception one day, and the rest is history.
The only concern I have with the decision is that doing a PHP 4 to 5 transition is a large overtaking. By the time you have gotten rid of all the PHP 4 classes, you might as well have done a full rewrite. There is just so much auditing that needs to be done once you put protected/private in front of properties and methods that it might be worth spending the time doing a rewrite.
Greg
BTW, I am not affiliated with Wikimedia, but am an avid MediaWiki hacker. My PHP coding has also been limited to version 5 since August of 2004. I only touch version 4 when forced.
IMO, there is no legitimate reason to continue developing PHP 4 code.
Except that most hosting providers _still_ haven't moved to PHP5 yet.
Perhaps someone knows of a list of hosting services that do support PHP5? I have found several sites that have reviews and comparisons of hosting services, but their information is not always reliable and up-to-date.
Regards, Bill K.
On Fri, 7 Jul 2006 20:30:41 -0700, "Bill Karwin" bill@karwin.com wrote in Message-ID 000e01c6a23e$e3c0c010$6800a8c0@winders:
Perhaps someone knows of a list of hosting services that do support PHP5?
I don't have a list, but I know my host supports it.
DreamHost: http://www.dreamhost.com/rewards.cgi?austicke
They also have one-click install and one-click upgrades of MediaWiki.
On 7/7/06, Bill Karwin bill@karwin.com wrote:
IMO, there is no legitimate reason to continue developing PHP 4 code.
Except that most hosting providers _still_ haven't moved to PHP5 yet.
Agreed. Unfortunately, you have to acknowledge that MediaWiki is software that serves the needs of Wikipedia. It is a testament to the software (and the developers) that so many people use it outside of its intended realm. At the end of the day, if PHP 5 is best for Wikipedia, then PHP 5 it is.
The silver lining in all of this is that due to MediaWiki's popularity, perhaps ISP's will succumb to the cries of its customers and be convinced to finally make the upgrade to 5.1. In the meantime, send a non-PHP 5 ISP an e-mail saying they lost your business because they don't support PHP 5.
Greg
On 7/7/06, Gregory Szorc gregory.szorc@gmail.com wrote:
FUD, FUD, FUD, and more FUD. PHP devs went to great ends to make PHP 5 very compatible with PHP 4. Most PHP 4 scripts ran just fine under PHP 5 without any modifications. The scripts that needed modifications needed all but a few single-liners, which could easily be found via grep. 99% of scripts that needed a heavy-lifting to work with PHP 5 were not written well to begin with. If you want to talk about PHP upgrades breaking things, you should read the developer notes about PHP 6. They plan to turn off a lot of the support for legacy PHP 4. It is kind of scary, actually. I guess it's the price one pays when a language evolves.
Thanks, this is what I wanted to learn.
I'm hosting with service that only has 4, and MediaWiki is the first piece of software to (very suddenly!) demand PHP5. My initial impressions were .. disgusted to say the least.
That PHP4 is still usable within the PHP5 environment is good news, although it may mean very significant troubleshooting. Can PHP4 and PHP5 live happily together, so I can still run my original PHP4 scripts without worrying too much, and run MediaWiki under a PHP5 engine?
I can get 5 installed and help influence all sorts of stuff.. but I don't want to go through hell with various wierd PHP4 scripts that will need troubleshooting.
..
So it sounds like MediaWiki will be further improving itself by leaning on the advantages PHP5 offers over their previous PHP4 methods.
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Sy Ali wrote:
[...] Can PHP4 and PHP5 live happily together, so I can still run my original PHP4 scripts without worrying too much, and run MediaWiki under a PHP5 engine
No and yes and yes.
No, you can't run two different version of PHP modules within apache.
Yes, you can run one version as apache module and the other as cgi module.
Yes, you can run two instances of apache, one public available on port 80 running e.g. php5 and the other running only on 127.0.0.1:8080 running php4 and using mod_proxy to re-direct requests to port 80 behind the scene to port 8080.
If performance is a concern, then the CGI version may not suit your needs well (but you should test with fastcgi). We're running the proxy-solution for years now without troubles. I think also Rasmus Lerdorf once on the PHP internals@ list mentioning that they're doing this that way at yahoo .. but I may be mistaken.
HTH, - - Markus
On 7/8/06, Sy Ali sy1234@gmail.com wrote:
I'm hosting with service that only has 4, and MediaWiki is the first piece of software to (very suddenly!) demand PHP5. My initial impressions were .. disgusted to say the least.
There's nothing that stops you from using legacy versions of MediaWiki. Brion has been diligent in the past in backporting critical security fixes. There have been no revolutionary changes since 1.5. Is there any feature in 1.7 that you desperately need?
Erik
On 7/8/06, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/8/06, Sy Ali sy1234@gmail.com wrote:
I'm hosting with service that only has 4, and MediaWiki is the first piece of software to (very suddenly!) demand PHP5. My initial impressions were .. disgusted to say the least.
There's nothing that stops you from using legacy versions of MediaWiki. Brion has been diligent in the past in backporting critical security fixes. There have been no revolutionary changes since 1.5. Is there any feature in 1.7 that you desperately need?
Nothing jumps to mind, but there is a long list of changes to look through. Presumably other changes will sneak in over the next year or so.. when official support is expected to start to drop off.
On 08/07/06, Sy Ali sy1234@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/8/06, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/8/06, Sy Ali sy1234@gmail.com wrote:
I'm hosting with service that only has 4, and MediaWiki is the first piece of software to (very suddenly!) demand PHP5. My initial impressions were .. disgusted to say the least.
There's nothing that stops you from using legacy versions of MediaWiki. Brion has been diligent in the past in backporting critical security fixes. There have been no revolutionary changes since 1.5. Is there any feature in 1.7 that you desperately need?
Nothing jumps to mind, but there is a long list of changes to look through. Presumably other changes will sneak in over the next year or so.. when official support is expected to start to drop off.
I don't see what the big issue is, to be honest. MediaWiki 1.7 requires PHP 5, it's as simple as that. Use it or don't; no-one here is forcing you. We're simply saying, "hey, here's another release of the stuff we use to run Wikipedia."
I sympathise with those who don't have the ability, voluntarily or otherwise, to upgrade to a modern version of PHP, but those problems aren't our fault any more than they are yours. I don't see why people have to get so uppity about it; we stated for months that this version required a new version of PHP. It's marked all over the place as clearly as possible.
If you want the functionality that 1.7 provides, then you will have to upgrade.
Rob Church
If you want the functionality that 1.7 provides, then you will have to
upgrade.
Understood, and I'm not objecting to the PHP5 requirement. I agree that it's a good thing. I just take issue with Gregory's overgeneralization that there is no legitimate reason to continue developing PHP 4 code.
I've emailed my hosting provider and asked if/when they plan on upgrading PHP and MySQL (newer MySQL is not required for MediaWiki, but for other apps I would like to use).
For what it's worth, godaddy.com and hostgator.com are a couple of hosting providers who support PHP5 and get good reviews.
Anyway, much appreciation to the MediaWiki team and the volunteers who test it, support it, develop extensions, etc. Congratulations on the 1.7 release milestone. May you all experience success beyond your wildest dreams!
Regards, Bill K.
Bill Karwin wrote:
If you want the functionality that 1.7 provides, then you will have to
upgrade.
and by the way, I upgraded to php5 yesterday and mediawiki 1.6 is very happy with it :-) jdd
mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org