Hi,
I have been developing PHP for about 3 years now. I am currently working
on an application to help administrators to manage the ini file. I would
like to contribute to this discussion, from a users/administrators point of
view. Sorry if you have covered some of the points before ;)
1: I assume that for the ext's that are dropped from core and added to
PECL, the extension line will be dropped from the ini file and users will
need to use some kind of 'use EXT::Extension' command. Will there be a way
to override which extensions will need to use this command?
For example could we compile php with --with-pecl-msession to enable the
msession ext without the need for a 'use' (or whatever) command.
2: Will the ini configuration setting disable_functions still apply to PECL
(and maybe PEAR, since there a lot of NET functions there) functions?
3: I am using am intermediate XML file format for my application. The
benefits to me are :
a) I can store warnings along with directives, so that potentially unsafe
directive values can cause warnings (at varying severities) to the user
before they generate the final ini file. This can prevent a lot of issues,
like register_globals (which most newbies know little about/don't consider
the security aspects)
b) I can store comments along with the directive
I am sure you all can think of other benefits :)
One possible benefit for ISP's would be the ability to fine tune directives
based on the url of the accessing document (for example to set the error
level for development servers easily [when using virtual servers]).
I think that sooner or later PHP is going to require a more flexible native
configuration file format. XML fits the bill in every way.
I have noticed the SOAP development discussions and see that they are
looking to co-develop the PEAR and C extensions. They are relying on
including a code snippet at the top of every page using soap
functions. Wouldn't it be better if (using an XML configuration) we could
enable some kind of use_pear_if_unavailable setting so that the pear
extension could be invisibly used instead of the core extension?
I am not jumping on the XML bandwagon - Apache has been using an xml-like
configuration format for a long time (imagine trying to configure a virtual
server using an ini format) and I feel that it would provide many benefits
to PHP.
I have set up a sourceforge project (phpxini) for my project. I will be
uploading files within the next week or so, including a DTD for my XML
document.
Please feel to make your comments... its just my 2 cents... but i think
these are important issues, and would greatly help us users/small ISP's.
Regards
Mike
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