From: Michael A. Peters > Manuel Aude wrote: >> I'm giving a PHP course next semester (3 hours all saturdays for 22 weeks) >> and I just realized that PHP 5.3 is coming very soon (2 days now!). So, my >> plans of teaching PHP 5.2 are starting to change, and I think it's a good >> idea to teach them 5.3 already. >> >> While the majority of the students use Windows, I'm aware that a vast amount >> will be using Ubuntu/Debian (and some use Gentoo, Fedora and Arch) >> distributions of Linux, so I'm hoping there won't be too many problems on >> installation. I don't want to waste the entire first class fixing >> installation problems, because that kills the student's motivation. >> >> The course starts on August, but I'm preparing it during the last two weeks >> of July. You think that installation packages will be bulletproof by then? >> Or should I just teach 5.2 and wait for another semester before starting on >> 5.3? I mean, most hosts will remain with PHP 5.2 for the rest of the year, >> so I'm a bit confused on what I should do. >> >> I'm just a university student that wants to spread PHP, for I've been using >> it for many years now =) > > Many hosts are still on php 5.1.x (IE RHEL based hosts). > I would be worried that many popular classes and apps might be quirky > under 5.3. > > I've not played with it at all, and probably won't for some time, but > I've been bitten by that more than once. > > Nice thing about 5.2.x as far as linux goes anyway, installing it is > cake from the package repositories. Using package repositories for php > installs is suggested as security fixes can be updated with ease. > > As someone running a newer version of php (5.2.9) than what my distro > ships with, here are some of the issues: Manuel, You might want to check on the release schedules for PHP 5.3(.1?) by the major distributions. Even if they are close to the end of your class schedule, will they be deployed that quickly to sites your students could be working on? Or will they still be working with 5.2 for the foreseeable future? I have recently been told that we are switching from compiling Apache, PHP and PostgreSQL ourselves to only using the official RedHat RPMs on our production servers[*]. This is coupled with a move to a managed hosting service. But since RH is not even shipping the most recent version of 5.2, I don't expect to see a 5.3 RPM for some time. Maybe it will have enough improvements to trigger an early update from them, but who knows. After they release it, it will still be a while before we pick it up, test it and deploy it. So even though I like some of the changes in 5.3, I am stuck with 5.2 for at least another year, maybe two. Bob McConnell [*] No, I don't like this at all. I see it as the antithesis of both the Open Source and Free Software philosophies. It means we give up control of some of the options we were selecting at compile time and have to settle for somebody else's idea of the perfect server. I fully expect it will come back to bite us at some point. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
