On 06/06/2011 10:56 AM, Johannes Schlüter wrote:
On Mon, 2011-06-06 at 10:18 -0500, Larry Garfield wrote:The only way, currently, that projects can predict what a given host will have installed is "bundled in core PHP". If it's in the core PHP bundle, we can *usually* expect it to be there. If not, we can *usually* presume it won't be. That's not a hard and fast rule, but it's the best we've got right now.While that rule is not true by far.
I never said it was a *good* rule. Just that it's the least bad we have right now. In the Drupal project (my home turf) we regularly struggle with debating if we can rely on a certain extension or not given that it's so hard to predict host behavior. Even among dedicated servers, many of my clients wrinkle their brows in confusion when I talk about installing a PECL module more complex than APC. We really do need some predictability in this market.
Unless we start a certification program ("PHP Certified Hoster" ..
demanding some specific features etc.) there's little we can do. And I
doubt we want to do that ;-)
If I had the time I'd consider it, frankly. We did manage to force the issue with PHP 5.2 with the GoPHP5 project. I once considered expanding its scope but never really had the time/energy to drive it.
One day[tm] I plan to make all this data public with a simple query interface. I'd also be interested in adding such a data collection to other software. If you're interested feel free to contact me of list. johannes
I am interested, actually. Stand by. :-) --Larry Garfield -- PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
