[webstack-discuss] PHP 5.2.6 pre-ARC draft for your review

[Sriram Natarajan]

Peter
 Thanks for your comments. Please see my response inline.

Peter Tribble wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 1:35 AM, Sriram Natarajan
> <Sriram.Natarajan at sun.com> wrote:
>   
>> Hi
>>  I was wondering, if you could take few minutes and run through this
>> (pre alpha) ARC draft of my upcoming PHP 5.2.6 integration within
>> OpenSolaris and let me know as to what you think .
>> http://wikis.sun.com/download/attachments/10390064/php-526-arc-pre-draft-v1.txt
>>
>>  In nutshell, PHP 5.2.6 integration brings in the following changes
>>
>> - Includes extensions like Imap and SNMP as well as pear/pecl support.
>> - Files are now delivered under /usr/php/5.2 (runtime),  /var/php/5.2
>> (for pear/pecl) and /etc/php/5.2 (for configuration)
>>     
>
> The snmp extension requires (I believe) net-snmp. You don't call this out as a
> dependency.
>   
Thanks for catching this. I will update the draft. Net-SNMP is delivered 
within SUNWsmagt package.  Considering that this additional dependency 
is not introducing a huge amount of download foot print or complexity to 
install, I would like to consider bundling within the core package. Any 
particular reason that you would rather not prefer SUNWmagt package to 
be included within 'php' (meta cluster for IPS) ?
> Given that customers may choose to not install net-snmp, should the snmp
> extension be packaged separately?
>   
Please note that  customers using OpenSolaris Community edition will 
have all these packages installed by default. So, this should not be a 
problem for them. However, Indiana (officially known as OpenSolaris 
2008.05/11) customers will use IPS meta cluster (say php) to get our 
packages installed and this meta cluster can also include SUNWmagt 
besides other dependencies like 'curl, tidy' etc.

One can argue that it is nice to distribute each individual extension in 
a separate package (there by reducing the dependency on core runtime 
package) but it introduces a huge maintenance headache for both 
customers as well as developers to ensure that every extension that a 
developer wants is installed on the production system. Rather, I would 
like to keep things simple by bundling all simple extensions (which does 
not warrant lot of external dependencies) within SUNWphp52u (core) package.

My current reasoning to split an extension into a separate packages is 
the additional foot print and complexity to install this (php) extension 
and its dependencies on a customer's system. Based on this reasoning, 
MySQL and PostgreSQL extensions are delivered as sepatate packages.

 Also, with the same reasoning, 'memcache' extension is bundled within 
php core. With respect to 'memcache' php extension - it requires 
SUNWmemcached and libevent packages as dependencies. However, these 
packages are straightforward runtime libraries . Hence, I decided to 
include within the core package.

However, I do agree that some customers might not need these extensions 
but still be forced to install these additional packages on their 
system. This might be an additional overhead. Af course, customers will 
always have the choice to disable individual extensions within php core 
(if they wish to) by editing corresponding ini files found under 
/etc/php/conf.d directory.

Af course, I am interested in your's as well as other customers feedback 
on the best thing to do for our customers.  Do you forsee any issues 
with this approach ?

thanks
Sriram