Edit report at http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=54250&edit=1
ID: 54250 Updated by: ras...@php.net Reported by: maciej at wiercinski dot net Summary: date_default_timezone_set stat()'s whole /usr/share/zoneinfo upon first call Status: Bogus Type: Bug Package: Date/time related Operating System: Linux 2.6 PHP Version: 5.3.5 Block user comment: N Private report: N New Comment: No it won't. You can distribute a binary pecl extension without needing "PECL". I'm not even sure what you mean by "PECL" here. An individual pecl extension is just a simple shared library. Nothing more. Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2011-03-17 00:02:47] maciej at wiercinski dot net ras...@php.net: It will still force them to distribute PECL (may be a concern for people building embedded/very small systems shipped with PHP). I don't really know PHP code, had just a very brief look at the patch itself and related functions, so what I'm saying may be completely invalid. What about compiling timezone data into dynamically loaded library, which they could ship separately of PECL/PHP itself / easily replace with calls to theirs? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2011-03-16 22:56:15] ras...@php.net Why not just make pecl/timezone dependent on the system timezone update. It seems easy enough to me. Your PHP package depends on pecl/timezone and pecl/timezone depends on the system timezone package. That should keep it all in synch. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2011-03-16 22:52:34] maciej at wiercinski dot net johan...@php.net: I can see at least two problems Debian (and other distribution) maintainers will have with the solution you have proposed. They would have to make PHP dependent on PECL, which is currently not the case (at least not in Debian). On other hand it will eventually lead to a situation in which PHP's timezone update has been rolled out and system's not, or vice-versa. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2011-03-16 18:56:32] johan...@php.net vJust a small comment on > The PHP tzdata changes are mixed in with the > mainline development, and sometimes depend on > other changes within the engine, so it's not > really feasible to cherry pick out the changes > into a stable release, even if we wanted to. This is not true. Distributions can distribute the timezone update using the pecl/timzeone package. No messing with engine stuff needed. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2011-03-15 18:52:29] seanius at debian dot org Hi guys, We'll take up further discussion on the bug over there, but thought I would cut/paste the (slightly amended) initial response here just for posterity's sake. === Hi Maciej, Does this actually cause a quantifiable and significant performance regression? This possibility of performance issues was discussed some time ago but it was decided that the stat calls would just hit the kernel fs cache and not cause any serious problems. If there are indeed problems, there are certainly ways this could be worked around, but it would add even further complexity to the patch which we'd all prefer to avoid if possible. To give you some extra background, since the PHP authors certainly have their own take on the situation: EVERY serious linux distribution ships this patch in some form. Redhat, Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, SLES, Opensuse (okay, maybe not Gentoo, but anyway...) all ship with this patch. So please keep that in mind when you here both sides of this argument :) The problem is that when the OS distributors release a timezone update, they don't want to *also* have to go package by package updating individual and "customized" timezone databases that might be embedded in a given application. Neither do they want to continuously update the version of PHP in their "stable" releases and have to deal with the numerous regressions that would result. The PHP tzdata changes are mixed in with the mainline development, and sometimes depend on other changes within the engine, so it's not really feasible to cherry pick out the changes into a stable release, even if we wanted to. This is a point of disagreement with the PHP authors, who want to have control over this aspect of the engine themselves (and they certainly have their justifications, such as systems with outdated or nonexistant tzdata, plus they add some extra TZ annotations in their private copy). Unfortunately they are not interested in providing any other way to work around this issue, despite the periodic overture from us or RedHat. The invitation is still open to try and find a reasonable technical solution for this, but I have been led to beleive that Derick has really dug in his heels on the issue and it's not worth any of our time to raise a big stink about it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The remainder of the comments for this report are too long. To view the rest of the comments, please view the bug report online at http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=54250 -- Edit this bug report at http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=54250&edit=1