I wanted to be sure that folks are aware of what's going on in the Windows/PHP world. I know that, in one sense, it's not our problem, but it *feels* like our problem to me, and to many of our users.
PHP5.3.6 was just released, and the Windows binaries are built with VC9, meaning that it won't work with our Windows binaries. I know that it's been discussed before, and there's a plan to move to VC9, but as of last week, the official PHP build doesn't run with the official Apache httpd build. The PHP website recommends that folks use the Apache Lounge build. This sucks. It sucks that our users have to jump through additional hoops. It sucks even more that there wasn't (or at least, it appears to me that there wasn't) conversation between the two communities prior to this happening. The folks in php-land are aware that it's a problem, but don't see to really think that it's *their* problem. For our part, we seem to be unaware that anything happened. I don't know that the relationship between Apache httpd and php communities is anybody's *fault*, but it's long struck me as a great shame that there isn't closer cooperation between the two communities. I'm not sure exactly what I'm suggesting we do about this. It would be nice if we could provide binaries built with VC9, or if we could recommend on the download site that people get binaries from ApacheLounge. I don't know if either of these is really an option. How would folks feel about our download site encouraging folks to use ApacheLounge's version of 2.2? I suspect that there'd be some resistance to this, based on our previous interactions with them. I have a foot in the documentation team of both projects, so I tend to hear both sides of the conversation at least from that perspective. I'd like for us to be more proactive about strengthening the community bond between us and what is probably the most important third-party Apache httpd module. There seems to be a pretty strong "they don't ever listen to us" attitude on both sides, and I'm not sure that it's really warranted. -- Rich Bowen rbo...@rcbowen.com
