John Plocher wrote:
> I would like to suggest that the design pattern being hashed out here
> (i.e., how to have multiple versions of a component installed on
> a given system) be explicitly called out and approved as part of this
> set of cases as an ARC best practice.
There already is a best practice for this. If I'd ever written the
opinion for
2003/321 Multiple JRE support, you'd find it there. I should probably do
that.
The important points are:
1) This was an exception, allowed because Sun encouraged the bundling
of JRE's with third-party products.
2) A lot of infrastructure was required.
So, we currently have a best practice, and the best practice is "don't".
Times change, and best practices can change, but I don't think they
should change by a fast-track (or any type of case) which provides a
mechanism without policy. Just like the original cases about "Getting
with the Freeware Program" took a lot of effort, this will probably also
take significant effort (but hopefully not as much as those circa 2000
cases did).
Thus far, the best guess I have at a policy is, "few, but at any level".
In this case, since the project team has strongly asserted that the PHP
community has no interest in Solaris (which is OK) and a dubious interest
in interface stability (which isn't OK), we have two viable choices:
Deny the component.
Implement a model very close to that used by the major UNIX distros.
This appears to be to lock in on one for the duration of what we would
call a Minor release. There are many variants on how an SA could get
a newer version, but the point is they have to actively "get it" and
it would
probably be marginally supported.
- jek3
