Thread

I just set up a PHP 5.3 environment for new development but just discovered that it isn’t compatible with EE 1.6.7. Well, I’m seeing a blank page on admin login and big blanks on Ryan Ireland’s tutorial “Engine City Times” homepage where there are member-restricted template views.

Our development team say they want to use PHP 5.3, but they also say they want to use EE and CodeIgniter. Well, they’re still hashing out the framework.

I was wondering if anyone is using PHP 5.3 with EE?

(thank goodness for MacPorts.)

—Diana

I checked a bunch of my sites and they’re all running 5.1.x to 5.2.x. No 5.3s yet. Any reason why the development team requires the bleeding edge of 5.3?

Using 5.2.8 on most of my sites. 5.3 is expected as a “stable release around the end of Q1 2009”. Any reason you want to use that in a production environment yet?

Our esteemed developer says:
  * performance
  * PHAR application package - increased ability to redeploy a website
  * namespaces
  * late static binding
  * E_DEPRECATED lets you know what is going to be removed from php6 and beyond
  * lambdas and closures.
  * http://www.sitepoint.com/article/whats-new-php-5-3/

I think he’ll be submitting more info to you about minor code modifications.

I am not aware of anybody running EE on 5.2.8 just yet, but I’d expect it to perform normally. That said, I am still not convinced that running what at the end of the day amounts to beta quality software in a production environment is necessarily a good idea. Either way, the best of luck to you.

I am not aware of anybody running EE on 5.2.8 just yet, but I’d expect it to perform normally.

I’ve got two EE sites running on PHP 5.2.8 with zero problems. Running “beta” in a production environment is a recipe for trouble. What’s their hurry?

Wow.  If he’s that confident that a Beta release of an open source language will perform without any bugs in a live environment, then he’s a (what do you say Ronnie…?) a Master Kahuna?

... then he’s a (what do you say Ronnie…?) a master Kahuna?

Or, a little “lolo.”

HA!  :lol:

My authoritative source tells me that PHP 5.3 has been worked on for over a year. Using the E_DEPRECATED notice is a great way to check if your code will be compatible with PHP 6, which is coming in the not-too-distant future. I’m sure that EE 2.0 is being written with an eye toward PHP 6. There isn’t much in EE 1.6.7 that’s deprecated, but there are a few things.

As it turns out, our dev team is using 5.3 for development, but not for production.

PHP 5.3 is not so “beta” as some seem to think. Zend framework already supports it. There’s “beta” and then there’s “beta”. Google Docs is beta, for example. Does that mean that noone except hardcore developer geeks should use it?

For everbody’s info, EE 1.6.7 is not compatible with PHP 5.3. EE uses ereg instead of the faster preg_match, the former of which has been declared deprecated and now throws an E_DEPRECATED notice. Note this has affected other CMSs as well!

In addition there are some issues with references and values being generated when you use extensions!

This should definitely be filed as a bug report since now PHP 5.3 is around the corner (they are basically just bug fixing and testing now…feature freeze has been around for a while now), and many hosts have a good history of switching (like bluehost), very quickly to new versions!

PHP 5.3 hasn’t even been released yet (yes, there’s an RC), so it’s a little early for widespread panic. Not that a notice would be the end of the world, of course.

... and many hosts have a good history of switching (like bluehost), very quickly to new versions!

That must be why nobody’s using PHP 4 anymore.. Oh, wait.

PHP 5.3 hasn’t even been released yet (yes, there’s an RC), so it’s a little early for widespread panic. Not that a notice would be the end of the world, of course.

To quote the php.net website:

Expect an RC3 in 2-3 weeks, although there will not be major changes so now is a good time to start the final testing of PHP 5.3.0 before it gets released, in order to find possible incompatibilities with your project.

In other words, the EE community also needs to test their product with the bleeding edge versions of PHP.

As far as the notice, the EE developers constantly claim that they are trying to make their product as fast as possible. The reason ereg is being deprecated because it is slower than preg_match. If that’s the case, why haven’t they switched?

The other issue is that no extensions will work now! This line on 120 of core.extensions.php

call_user_func_array(array(&$this, 'universal_call_extension'), $args);

causes the following warning:

Warning: Parameter 2 to Extensions::universal_call_extension() expected to be a reference, value given in core/core.extensions.php on line 119

This sounds pretty serious to me!

I think we all understand your point, but your tone suggests panic…like all EE sites will break in, t-minus 3 weeks…!  OMG!  :ahhh:

We’re simply stating that yes 5.3.0 will be out soon, and yes it will be a bit faster, but you can still run EE 1.6.7 on 5.2.x and less.

Besides, any half-rate webhost will give you the option to use several versions of PHP and I highly doubt they will just upgrade your currently running PHP version to 5.3.0 least all your script breaks. 😉

2.0 will eliminate all POSIX regular expressions.