Wedge
Public area => Features => The Pub => Features: Forward thinking => Topic started by: Nao on May 6th, 2011, 05:09 PM
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Feature: Removing deprecated code
Developer: Arantor & Nao
Target: admins, modders, themers
Status: 99% (believed to be complete, but it's a never-ending feature implementation because of its very nature.)
Comment:
We believe that software should live in the present, not in the past. Libraries that were deprecated years ago should not be supported anymore, because they mean overhead, bloat, and usually prevent developers from using new features, for fear of breaking something on older platforms. Because some people are too afraid of "fixing what isn't broken", they're still using PHP 4.x and MySQL 4.0 these days.
They shouldn't be afraid.
So we removed support for PHP < 5.1.2, MySQL < 4.1.2, and are requiring support for the GD2 graphics library (which shouldn't be a problem in 99% of the cases.)
Dozens of other minor libraries, functions and programming methods that didn't belong in this age were also deprecated, such as support for the Wap, Wap2 and iMode wireless modes, the boardmod installation system for add-ons, or older SMF1 compatibility code.
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Update: we're considering dropping support for PHP < 5.3, instead of 5.1.2.
The reasons behind it:
- 5.3 is already 2 years old (will be in two weeks). We can no longer consider it 'young'. It has received several incremental updates, and should be perfectly stable now.
- 5.2 and 5.3 add some features that, although not vital, are nice enough that we sometimes used them without realizing we couldn't. Then we had to write our code differently, etc... It's not cool.
- It's best to keep up with the current version, if only because it allows us to test for compatibility. Sometimes new PHP versions break compatibility, so we need to install these versions... Might as well ask everyone to use the same branch as we do.
- And finally, really -- here's the thing we'll always say to people who complain about version numbers in Wedge.
If you're really serious about outdated software, use SMF 2.0!
Your host should have PHP 5.3 installed. If it doesn't, maybe it's a cheap, bad host, and maybe they're not up to date on most of their software -- as a result, it may create other issues in Wedge that wouldn't trigger otherwise.
Guys & gals, we'd be interested in knowing what PHP (and MySQL) version you're running your main SMF install on! This information should be in your admin homepage.
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the php version on oldest linux (debian etch) is 5.2.0-8 :huh:
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PHP version 5.2.17
MySQL version 5.1.56
:sob:
Host moving me to 5.3 server sometime
:)
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PHP version 5.2.14
MySQL version 5.0.92-community
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PHP version 5.2.9
MySQL version 5.0.91-community
:sob:
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PHP version 5.3.5
MySQL version 5.5.8 :P
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PHP 5.3.2
MSQL 5.1.41
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PHP Version: 5.2.17
MySQL: 5.1.52
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PHP version: 5.3.6 (AlwaysData)
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I have no idea what my VPS has but my local has PHP 5.2.quiteold...
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Thank you guys...
I can assume that everyone's at least at 5.2, that's the good news.
The bad news being that over half of you are at 5.2, so maybe 5.3 is a tad too demanding as the minimum version.
5.2 would still be good. It has JSON and ZIP by default, as well as file upload progress. But 5.3 would be great. Namespaces, lambda functions for me (I learned to love them in JS), MySQLi for Pete... Sweet.
Pete, locally you could use WampServer. It's working great for me, and the lowest default version of PHP on it is 5.3.0.
Etch was the Debian I'd installed on my server last time I had one -- a couple of years ago. I would assume if I'd kept it, I'd have updated the main packages, but apparently PHP 5.3 is only available either through recompiling, or through non-official package servers like php53.dotdeb.org... Hmm. That'd mean I'd be locked out of my own forum system, eh. Or that I'd get a good reason to try and upgrade it, obviously.
Need more configuration samples. Keep 'em coming! :)
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PHP v. 5.29
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I just found on my cheap shared hosting (Hostgator) that 5.2 is the default but 5.3 is available so I changed it and it is now at 5.3.6.
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WampServer... no thanks, I've been building configurations manually for years, I'd hate to stop now ;) I may have to bump Apache too but since I checked and find myself on Apache 2.0 and PHP 5.2.6 it's probably time to update localhost anyway.
Btw, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx) has 5.3.2 so if Ubuntu does it on an LTS release, it might not be so hard to convince others to do so...
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5.2 would still be good. It has JSON and ZIP by default, as well as file upload progress. But 5.3 would be great.
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MySQL version: 5.0.91-log
PHP: 5.2.17
1&1 :(
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MySQL 5.1.52
PHP 5.2.17 (Can easily change to 5.3 though.)
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PHP version - 5.3.4
MySQL version - 5.0.92-community-log
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PHP 5.2.17
MySQL 5.1.56-community-log
and
PHP 5.2.13
MySQL 5.0.92-community
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PHP 5.3.6 on my production server and MYSQL version 5.1.?. My test server has PHP 5.2.17 and MYSQL 5.1.57.
// IE 4 is rather annoying, this wouldn't be necessary...
echo '
var fSetupCredits = function ()
{
smfSetLatestSupport();
smfCurrentVersion()
}
addLoadEvent(fSetupCredits);
// ]]></script>';
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In my main production servers:
PHP 5.2.17
MySql 5.0.67
But I have the choice to use other versions in subfolders if needed (included PHP 5.3)
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TE, you made the jump to SimpleXML? I was carefully going to reuse Subs-Package.php to interpret XML in the package manager overhaul but if SXML is already used in one area, hell, let's reuse it properly! (And, incidentially, I had to bone up on it for my Zend exam that was supposed to be next week but won't be due to an administrative fuck up caused by my not having a passport.)
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PHP is 5.3.6 & MySQL MySQL version 5.1.49 on main VPS and PHP 5.2.something old & MySQL 5.Idon't know on the other.
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Judging by the comments here, 5.2 is easily a safe bet, but that 5.3 isn't unrealistic... :) (Crap, I might actually have to update my local machine in that case)
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I think I have 5.3 and well, that's it...
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PHP 5.3.3
MySQL 5.1.49
Dropping PHP 5.2 might be okay for a future release, marking code as 'we'd like to replace this with' or 'would like to use'...
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TE, you made the jump to SimpleXML? I was carefully going to reuse Subs-Package.php to interpret XML in the package manager overhaul but if SXML is already used in one area, hell, let's reuse it properly!
The one thing I still miss in SimpleXML is proper error handling (broken XML files, e.g. unclosed tags etc) but that's already solved within the new importer engine (the one in the team board is totally outdated, I'll upload the new one tomorrow).
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TE, you made the jump to SimpleXML? I was carefully going to reuse Subs-Package.php to interpret XML in the package manager overhaul but if SXML is already used in one area, hell, let's reuse it properly! (And, incidentially, I had to bone up on it for my Zend exam that was supposed to be next week but won't be due to an administrative fuck up caused by my not having a passport.)
Let's PUSH the innovation! :D
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Sure, we're not looking for a large audience, but... What about the existing Wedge enthusiasts who are on PHP 5.2? I don't know if I can 'force' them to switch to 5.3 just because I want to be able to use lambda functions...
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Uhm.. let's ask them if they're willing to ask their hosting to update their PHP install or change hosting (hosting with an outdated PHP environment IMHO aren't worth to be used)!
Ok, I'm sure I've made a lot of errors in this phrase.. but it's complex!! :P
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I'm not sure PHP 5.2 is 'that' outdated, really... It's certainly not flavor-of-the-day, but it's still very much usable.
Using PHP 4 definitely is outdated, though. By 10 years :P
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Well, in this era, a host that doesn't update its "major product" (PHP environment) in 2 years, IHMO is a bad host...
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PHP version: 5.2.17
MySQL version: 5.0.92
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Is there a reason they might not have updated? Is 5.3 a major memory upgrade as well or some other reason to give it a pass like most of us did on Vista?
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There are some backwards incompatible changes in 5.3 versus earlier, but nothing that affects properly written code and for the benefits (and performance enhancements) it's worth making the move.
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Many personal VPS and hosts use Centos 5.x which uses the PHP 5.2.17. One of the big holdups to php 5.3 has been there isn't a pear package that runs with 5.3, so a lot of programs that need it like APC cache, etc don't work without doing custom compiles. Many hosts also provide mail interfaces (squirel mail, roundcode, etc) which all fail with 5.3
Once Centos 6 makes the air, then php 5.3 will have good support.
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Ahhh, yes, my host has the Squirrel and a couple other mail interfaces.
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Many personal VPS and hosts use Centos 5.x which uses the PHP 5.2.17. One of the big holdups to php 5.3 has been there isn't a pear package that runs with 5.3, so a lot of programs that need it like APC cache, etc don't work without doing custom compiles. Many hosts also provide mail interfaces (squirel mail, roundcode, etc) which all fail with 5.3
Once Centos 6 makes the air, then php 5.3 will have good support.
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Or you can just compile, which is quite easy.
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Or you can just compile, which is quite easy.
In either case I was making a generic statement about many hosts out there using Centos and premade packages as part of CPanel, HCMS, Virtualmin, etc....
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AFAIK cPanel, Directadmin etc install PHP/MySQL etc on their own and don't rely on system packages, and they are generally updated within a week of release.
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Okay, so now that we've established everyone here is running at least 5.2.x, we can safely require 5.2. It's better than nothing!
As to the minimum minor version... What should it be? XenForo is 5.2.4. I considered it bold last year, but six months later I just see it as normal ;) I don't have the time to go through the PHP 5.2.x changelog and see whether some interesting bug fixes were applied later in the process.
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The main reason XF is 5.2.4 is because of its dependencies with respect to Zend Framework components. (Please, dear god, never let us go down that road. That road is the path to madness, from experience.)
Anyone using 5.2.x should be using 5.2.17 on a production environment unless they know for certain they're using a 64 bit build of PHP, otherwise they are at trivial risk of DDoS from floating point mishandling.
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PHP 5.2.6
MySQL 5.0.51a
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My most outdated VPS is:
php 5.2.6-1 on Lenny
mysql 5.0.51a on Lenny
My most recent VPS is:
php 5.3.3-7 on Squeeze
mysql 5.1.49 on Squeeze
And, in all honesty, nothing I own ever falls a major version behind Debian's current stable distribution for more than 6-9 months. So 5.3/5 sounds good to me. I've only got one Lenny VPS and it is going to get nuked in ~3 months when I move the site in my sig.
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MySQL version: 5.0.51a-24+lenny5
PHP: 5.2.14-0.dotdeb.0
MySQL version: 5.1.49-3
PHP: 5.3.3-7+squeeze1
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Версия Apache 2.2.17
Версия PHP 5.2.15
Версия MySQL 5.0.90-community-log
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My VPS runs:
lighttpd/1.4.28
PHP/5.3.3-7
MySQL/5.1.49
No problems here then.
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Need a like button.
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For?
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For liking the fact that we're pushing more recent versions.
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So... Minimum version? 5.2 or 5.3? We're still unsure about this one...
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So... Minimum version? 5.2 or 5.3? We're still unsure about this one...
5.3 is the standard choice for php5 in Debian stable, and Debian is fairly slow on releases.
So for me anyway, 5.3 seems like the better option, if it gives you a further array of tools to create a better forum :)
EDIT: Checked with Nearlyfreespeech (my favourite web hosting company) and at least they support 5.3. What can I say? Maybe people ought to update their programs. ;)
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Go with 5.3. Be bold and innovative with it. Besides, what's your release plan like? 6 months to a final release? In 6 months, where do you think 5.3 adoption will be at?
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So... Minimum version? 5.2 or 5.3? We're still unsure about this one...
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5.3 ftw.
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Even though half our potential users are currently on 5.2 then? :^^;:
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Its up to you :P
Just I know the only 5.2 VPS I have left will be gone by the time Wedge would be worth installing on that site. ;)
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How many of you can get your host to upgrade to PHP 5.3? Any decent host should be co-operative enough to upgrade to the current stable version of PHP.
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I've internally changed the minimum version to 5.2. Not much to change, actually... Our current code doesn't 'really' require 5.2+, it just could make use of that knowledge later on.
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I would also say 5.3 if Wedge was only for us, but as Nao says we need to think on the potential users.
After all, I only see here geeks answering. :eheh:
I will never accept working with a hosting company if they don't provide the more up-to-date software, but I am not sure if noobs (more than 90% of the people) even know how to do that or if they have ever thought about it for a minute.
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I've internally changed the minimum version to 5.2. Not much to change, actually... Our current code doesn't 'really' require 5.2+, it just could make use of that knowledge later on.
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If there are important features that require 5.3 that's different.
If that's the case I will go then for 5.3 and keep those important features. Noobs will need to adapt (and/or we will need to be patient with them and teach them).
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There's nothing that we expressly need 5.3 for in Wedge right now, but that's not to say we have to leave it that way. There's plenty of time to change yet :)
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One question may be, is Wedge really trying to appeal to "noobs"?
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One question may be, is Wedge really trying to appeal to "noobs"?
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If the noob is a pretty girl, definitely yes. :eheh:
Otherwise, well... We've all been noobs at one point. But they're not our target audience, yeah. They're the audience we're going to redirect to SMF anytime we can.
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...is Wedge really trying to appeal to "noobs"?
Yet, I heard people talking about running it on shared hosts and so on. Regularly.
If it turns out well, the name gets about, people will want to use it, noob or not.
The thing is, by making things more logical and run more smoothly, the odds are fairly in favour that it will be more noob friendly than SMF by accident anyway, even though we're not encouraging its use by such.
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The thing is, by making things more logical and run more smoothly, the odds are fairly in favour that it will be more noob friendly than SMF by accident anyway, even though we're not encouraging its use by such.
But on the SysOP side I think it's better to not appeal to less skilled people, as they are very likely to "cost" more in support than they'll be able to "feed back". Then again, I'm not a good samaritan.
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I'm not sure I know exactly what you mean about 'making things appear/disappear'. But I certainly won't disagree that the admin panel is a clusterfuck of stuff that doesn't really make sense. 1.1 was better, 2.0 took everything in 1.1 and added more "stuff" to it and it's confused a lot of people, particularly the way permissions were done.
That said, you can't, realistically, have configuration options for every little thing: the admin panel already exceeds 100 1st and 2nd level menu items (which means you're basically talking ~90 pages of stuff, all told - first level items just display the first of an item's second level items)
There is a certain degree of value in 'less is more', in fact. Or at least, the perception of less stuff even if there's actually more stuff available to you.
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I'm not sure I know exactly what you mean
about 'making things appear/disappear'.
But I certainly won't disagree that the admin panel is a clusterfuck of stuff that doesn't really make sense.
There is a certain degree of value in 'less is more', in fact. Or at least, the perception of less stuff even if there's actually more stuff available to you.
Here: Barry Schwartz: The paradox of choice(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO6XEQIsCoM#)
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If there are important features that require 5.3 that's different.
If that's the case I will go then for 5.3 and keep those important features.
There's nothing that we expressly need 5.3 for in Wedge right now, but that's not to say we have to leave it that way. There's plenty of time to change yet :)
WePortal will be dissapointed.
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Oh, that's a good lecture.
as how the users perceive the site
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Oh, that's a good lecture.
So, what is it you're asking for?
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That's the thing: the admin panel is still very much in flux. There will be a LOT more in it than there is in SMF's, simply because we've added more to it than we have taken out.
Right now it is basically just SMF's admin panel with half a dozen things gone and plenty more added. So, thus, my question stands: you've said that you see a problem with the look and layout options. What problem do you see? How would you resolve it?
I have my own ideas, some of which are fairly controversial on the subject of pruning the admin panel, so let's start on a smaller area...
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That's the thing: the admin panel is still very much in flux.
There will be a LOT more in it than there is in SMF's, simply because we've added more to it than we have taken out.
You've said that you see a problem with the look and layout options. What problem do you see? How would you resolve it?
Let's start from the top:
1. Drop down menus. The problem is not so much that there are drop down menus, it's more that thee content in them can be ambiguous. For example, the first time you register, and you want to change your theme, where do you go? In the beginning you'll probably be looking for something called "settings" or "control panel", maybe you'll scroll down to the bottom of the page to check if there's a dropdown menu for it, as it is on many boards. When you don't find it there you'll look further. Could your settings be under "Profile", maybe? Yes. Yes they could. So you click account settings and what do you see?
Just an example.
(http://i.imgur.com/06ObR.png)
You're getting confused. Where can I change my theme? If you are an inquiring mind you might just hover over modify profile long enough to find look and layout.
Thank God. You're there. The same problem develops if you want to change the default setting of " Return to topics after posting by default." or "Messages to display per page:"
This problem is to a big extent fixed when you use the "sidebar menus" instead of dropdown menus whenever possible, but there might be better solutions...
I'll be back with more about this later. Right now: Dinner time. ;)I have my own ideas, some of which are fairly controversial on the subject of pruning the admin panel, so let's start on a smaller area...
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I am on normally hosting in the Netherlands.
PHP: 5.2.17
MySQL: 5.0.91-community-log
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For example, the first time you register, and you want to change your theme, where do you go?
I even have one entry in my to-do list -- that basically says, "build a styling switcher somewhere on every page". Before I do this, I'll have to cache styling entries because right now it scans folder to find them (which allows me to manipulate stylings easily and without fear of any caching problems.)
But as you see... It's something we're aware of.Thank God. You're there. The same problem develops if you want to change the default setting of " Return to topics after posting by default." or "Messages to display per page:"
I probably mentioned it in the feature list somewhere, but Wedge checks this setting by default. :)This problem is to a big extent fixed when you use the "sidebar menus" instead of dropdown menus whenever possible, but there might be better solutions...
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But as you see... It's something we're aware of.
What problem do you see? How would you resolve it?
So please don't take this the wrong way. I'm just laying out what I think is done badly today. If you want me to stop yapping that is fine too. :)Sidebar menus have UI issues just the same.
This problem is to a big extent fixed when you use the "sidebar menus" instead of dropdown menus whenever possible, but there might be better solutions...
Maybe there's a better place here to post my musings? Hmm.
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Very very soon stable release PHP 5.4(http://www.php.net/) :yahoo:
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Well, it won't be available on a large scale for a few years, so it won't change anything to our requirements... Right now, it's 5.2.3.
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PHP 5.4.0(http://www.php.net/) is available :yahoo:
Many hosting will be upgraded to PHP 5.4 this year?
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No, they won't upgrade yet. There are still hosts running 5.2 which is a few years old as it is.
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So, they're adding mixins (like WeCSS but for objects :P), and JavaScript-style short arrays? That's not a lot, but it's stuff that I can see people using. Too bad I can use $arr = [0,1] right now in PHP 5.2 :P
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Decent mixin support is more than long overdue in PHP (though depending on what you're doing it can be very fragile and break in unexpected ways), though it has of course been possible to implement in various interesting ways.
Short arrays? *shrug* I have to say I'm just not that 'gimme RIGHT NOW' about 5.4, whereas 5.3 brought stuff that was immediately useful.
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Like what? Apart from namespaces, can't think of anything...
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Not that we use them much, but late static binding's quite a draw, better support for closures too, and the garbage collector's smarter when it comes to cyclic references (which helps deal with memory leaks)
On a smaller note, 5.3 also brought mysqlnd as a replacement under the hood for the old libmysqlclient connector, which aside from solving a messy licensing issue is actually faster and cleaner.