[NBLUG/talk] php 4 vs. php 5 -- which to use? how to maintain?

[Dave Sisley]

Steve Johnson wrote:

>Just my thoughts on PHP4 and FC4.
>
>I followed all the walk throughs I could find on the fedoraforums on
>how to down grade from PHP5 to PHP4 and non of them worked, I used the
>FC3 RPMs and still ran into dependency problems, some of them I just
>did not want to deal with (Required downgrading a bunch of libraries),
>so  I ended up just sticking with PHP5, and making my code run with
>it.
>
>The main problem I ran into with PHP4 vs PHP5 was with PEAR, there are
>some include files for pear that just do not exist in the PHP5 version
>of pear, that were there for PHP4.  This ran me into some crazy
>problems with an app that was developed where I work.  I came up with
>a weird work around for it.
>
>If I had to re-visit this issue, and PHP4 was a must have, which
>considering the time I put into this, it should have been a must have
>;).  I think I would stick wiht a distro that supports PHP4 and has no
>plans to go to 5 for  a while.
>
>-Steve
>  
>
Thanks, Steve & Eric.  I decided to go with CentOS and the application 
is working fine under php 4.3.9. 

What a headache, though.  This puts a real dent into the 'portability' 
that php is supposed to bring to the table.  From my standpoint, I can 
go with this new CentOS machine and just serve the app from there, but 
It's gotta be hard on developers who want people to be able to install 
their program on a server but can't because of 4 vs. 5 issues.

Ahhh.  Progress.

-dave.

-- 
Dave Sisley
dsisley at sonic.net
roth-sisley.net