On Thu, 14 Feb 2019 at 09:43, Zeev Suraski <z...@php.net> wrote: > Does it mean that when PHP 8.0 comes out (in roughly two years' time most > probably), we'd be saying this is experimental? Or that only in the > meantime, for the brave folks that want to experiment PHP 8.0 ~2yrs before > it's released, we'd say it's experimental but will remove that tag by the > time 8.0 is released? >
The latter. Every new feature is experimental until it's released; scalar type hints were experimental in master until 7.0 was released; typed properties are experimental until 7.4 is released; I don't see why this should be any different. > Offering it as > something experimental (i.e. not for production) in 7.4 can help us with > that goal, as it will make it easier for a wider range of people to > experiment with it and provide feedback. > As I mentioned in a previous e-mail, I'm not clear who these extra users are, or what value their feedback will be. On one hand, if someone tests their application on a stale version of the JIT engine released with 7.4.0, and says "it segfaults when I foo" or "I'm surprised it doesn't optimise bar", the answer is likely to be "we fixed that 6 months ago in master". On the other hand, if someone is confident enough to enable an experimental JIT feature on a server, they're probably fine with running a pre-alpha snapshot, or building it from source (e.g. by downloading Rasmus's vagrant box). If the feature was "mostly finalised but needs more testing", then an experimental release might make sense; but that's not the impression I get here, as it's been said over and over that deeper changes are needed to get the full advantage, and that's why we need PHP 8 in the first place. Regards, -- Rowan Collins [IMSoP]
