Omer Cohen posted <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, excerpted below, on Fri, 22 Apr 2005 14:13:51 +0200:
> PHP 5.0 was released a long time ago, and alot of fixes and patches were > released after it to make sure it's sable. > > According to PHP.net <http://php.net/> the stable versions are PHP 5.0.4 && > 4.3.11 > 4.3.11 is marked stable, but 5.0.4 dosn't even exist on the tree. > > 5.0.0 isn't marked at all, and everything till 5.0.3-r2 is marked are hard > masked and still being tested. > > It's been like this for a long time now. > > As a PHP developer I believe that 5.0.4 is more then stable, and should be > added and marked stable. > > I don't wanna override the system and install it manualy. OK, I see a big discussion, but nobody has yet made this point, directly at least, so here it is... I agree that 5.0.4 should at least be in the tree, if upstream is calling it stable. The point that should be emphasized, however, is that there's a /big/ difference between the upstream application being "stable", and Gentoo's particular instance, that is, the ebuild script that merges it onto a Gentoo system, being stable. Gentoo's keywording, while somewhat correlating with upstream in that what upstream has declared a beta or RC is often never arch-stable keyworded on Gentoo, generally serves to indicate the Gentoo ebuild maintainer's evaluation of the stability of the EBUILD, *NOT* the stability (or lack thereof) of the upstream source. Thus, as I said above, yes, the version that upstream calls "stable" should reasonably be expected to be in the portage tree in some form within a reasonable (few week, often less) time, however, one can't always expect that said portage tree version will be marked stable just because upstream defines that particular version of their product as stable, because the status of the Gentoo instance of it, the ebuild, may itself not be stable, on one or more archs, possibly on all of them. In this instance, >=php-5.0 on Gentoo is hard masked, not because of what upsteam says, but because (presumably) there have been and remain unresolved issues with the Gentoo deployment. Something in Gentoo's previous deployments conflicts with the current 5.0 layout, and a smooth transition hasn't yet been worked out and fully tested, so the 5.x series remains hard masked. Ignoring for the moment the issue of the 5.0.4 upstream-stable version itself not being in the tree at all, if a sysadmin is suitably comfortable with php-5.x, and either understands the issues keeping it masked on Gentoo and knows they don't apply in his case or at least is willing to extend the effort to work around any issues that may appear, said sysadmin is entirely free to package.unmask, or add keywords in an overlay, as appropriate. That's why the portage system has been designed with that flexibility in place, after all -- so it can be used at the decision of the individual Gentoo user -- aka the local Gentoo system sysadmin. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman in http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
