PHP version 5.2.17 in bleeding edge repository for CentOS 5

Howdy all,

I’ve updated PHP in our bleeding edge repository for CentOS to 5.2.17. See the announcement at php.net for changes.

Also, I want to revisit a topic we’ve discussed a couple of months ago in the ticket tracker, regarding PHP and the bleeding edge repository:

Who wants bleeding edge to move to PHP 5.3? More importantly, who wants it to stay with 5.2, and why (which applications are not yet compatible)?

When it was discussed a couple of months back there were still a significant number of Drupal, Joomla, and other CMS modules an plugins, and even a few Install Scripts, that were not yet compatible, and no scripts that required 5.3. So, we made the decision to stick with 5.2 for the time being. But, being “bleeding edge”, we do like to live on the edge with that repo, so I’m revisiting the question.

So, chime in with which apps or modules you think will have a problem with 5.3, if you know of any. If you don’t chime in now, and we make the switch, you’ll have no one to blame but yourself. :wink:

One of the things that attracted me to Virtualmin was the availability of PHP 5.2.14 (at the time) I think having 5.2.x in a semi-bleeding repo, then having 5.3 in a bleeding edge repo would be better, or perhaps both of them in the same repository if possible. One of the major benefits I keep telling clients about is the availability of several PHP versions, 4.x, 5.1.x, 5.2.x. Having 5.3 would be good too, but only if 5.2 still sticks around. PHP 5.3 has some major changes to functions and security. Lots of popular software works, or will work with 5.3, but all the little applications most likely won’t.

Lucas Peyatt
Ohio Internet LLC

I’d love to see 5.3 in the bleeding edge repo although this may be a mute point now that 5.3.3 is in the 5.6 release of centos (http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html-single/5.6_Release_Notes/index.html)

alternatively im using this at the moment and this works just fine

http://iuscommunity.org/

I think that for us, at least for the time being, we need to be able to continue to support 5.2. We primarily host Drupal sites. There still seem to be quite a few Drupal modules that are not clean in 5.3 - though that finally seems to be improving. I would love to be able to move everyone to 5.3, but I don’t see that as practical for a while particularly since we have clients who are not particularly good about upgrading all of their modules to the latest versions.

So - one way or another we’re going to need to keep 5.2 on our servers as the normal production version of PHP for at least a while yet. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you shouldn’t be able to put a 5.3 version in the repository - but we won’t be upgrading to it for a while now.

5.6 CentOS will cause us the same issue, by the way.

Older joomla sites (v1.0.15) will not work with PHP 5.3
it will work as of joomla 1.5.15

I would need to keep PHP 5.2.x also

Per haps both php versions can be in the repo?

I see no pressing reason to even have 5.3 yet in the repo since nothing requires it yet and probably wont until the end of 2011 or early 2012.

I personally use it because i like php-fpm =)

The needs of one do not out weight the needs of the majority

While indeed some of the installers will work with php 5.3, I doubt all of them are compatible, though, I have no specific knowledge of any that are not off hand. But your script installers are just one piece of the puzzle. Some customers do their own coding as well, or modifications to the code, say one of the shopping carts. But, we do have to encourage customers to upgrade their code as well, as, you cannot put this off indefinitely.

Yes, Centos 5.6 will cause the same issues.

Certainly the new features of php 5.3 are very desirable, at least to me!

Still, I would ask for more time before moving to 5.3

5.6 CentOS will cause us the same issue, by the way.

No, it won’t.

RHEL, and thus CentOS, never roll incompatible versions out under the same package name. It is explicitly prohibited by their packaging policy. So, the CentOS 5 series will always have a php package that is some patched version of 5.1.6. That’ll never change, including in 5.6. This is why we (and by “we”, I mean “me”, but I really do) love CentOS and RHEL on servers so much. You can absolutely predict without question whether your software that works today will continue to work tomorrow or next year; and the answer is always “yes”.

What is changing is that they’re adding an optional php53 package, which would replace php, if you installed it. Thus, nobody will accidentally get PHP 5.3, and everybody that needs older PHP will always have PHP 5.1.6 of some version.

I think it’s a valid approach, and one that many distros have used in the past for similarly incompatible changes. And, since they’re doing that, I don’t need to bump our bleeding edge repo to 5.3…so, if you need 5.2 specifically (can’t use 5.1.6 and can’t use 5.3.x), then you can keep using the bleeding edge package we provide.

Yes, Centos 5.6 will cause the same issues.

No, it won’t. See my earlier reply to cruiskeen: https://www.virtualmin.com/node/16895#comment-76160

And wrong I am — when I saw the initial announcement of 5.3 being in Centos 5.6 I thought that was peculiar, but – anyway, after I put in the post I realized the error of my ways, and that 5.3 was going to be an optional upgrade. Which fits much better, as you say, into the RHEL mode of upgrades.

The issue is php 5.2 isn’t supported and there’s several security issues that are not present in php 5.3. I’m going to move my server to php 5.3 as soon as i can…:slight_smile:

allowing PHP 5.3 on CentOS would be great. It would allow us to switch from Ubuntu LTS to CentOS and get better support from our partners.

The lack of modern software on CentOS’s official repositories make it impossible for us to use CentOS.

We’ve been using PHP 5.3 in production for a year now, and we’ve never looked back. Sure, some open-source software stopped working but we didn’t care for them anyway and replaced it with our own.

So, from our tunnel-vision’s perspective :), making PHP 5.3 available to CentOS would be a great benefit

Since PHP 5.3 is going to be provided as an optional upgrade when CentOS 5.6 hits the shelves, chances are the Virtualmin won’t be providing that as part of the bleeding edge repo. There’s no need to provide the same packages that CentOS will be offering :slight_smile:

Moving forward – I’d expect to see PHP 5.2.17 in the bleed repo for the foreseeable future… and that if you need PHP 5.3.x, to sit on the edge of your seats, eagerly awaiting the arrival of CentOS 5.6 :slight_smile:

-Eric

Yep, totally makes sense.