[sles-beta] php disappeared in beta6?

[Olaf Kirch]

Hi Joe,

On Thursday 15 May 2014 09:36:38 Joe Doupnik wrote:
>      Without having heard Matthias' presentation on the topic, the
> appearance at present is this is hostage taking. As we all know,
>  PHP is a central component of building production servers. Chasing
>  down -devel RPMs is awkward enough, now core material is being
>  placed behind locked doors. Might someone offer a brief
>  explanation of why this approach is being taken?

"Hostage taking" and "locked door" are somewhat strong words... and I 
hope you'll come to a different conclusion once we're talking about 
the facts behind these changes.

In a nutshell, SLES faces a dilemma with fast moving technologies. 
SLES releases are in the market for a very long time. Customers using 
SLES expect a high level of stability in everything, including APIs. 
Now, API stability is definitely not one of the focus areas of the 
people creating Web development frameworks. This includes php, ruby on 
rails, you name it.

With SLES, we could definitely take the approach of companies selling 
pharmaceuticals: "Bayer Froozle fights migraine, except when you do 
this or that or something else, and by the way if you're unlucky, it 
might make your hair fall out, cause your ears to grown like balloons 
and your nose to turn green, ..." Just like that, we could say "In 
SLES, we keep all APIs stable, except for <insert longish list>, and 
we provide full support for everything, except for <insert another 
list>."

In some weird coordinate system, this might be considered customer 
friendly, but in most it's not.

In the past, we have had a very hard time to upgrade components such 
as php. Not really for technical reasons, but because of such 
expectations on the life cycle. So what we are going to do is to 
create several modules (aka channels) which will be free of charge to 
SLE customers. These modules will hold collections of related 
packages, and communicate a clear life cycle and support statement for 
each module.

You discovered the drawback of the module concept. It's easy to miss. 
On the other hand, you receive a strong benefit - which is a regular 
refresh of the code base for components such as php, which was not 
possible before.

One of these modules will be targeted at Web Development, and contain 
PHP.

Regards,
Olaf
-- 
Neo didn't bring down the Matrix. SOA did. (soafacts.com)
--------------------------------------------
Olaf Kirch - Director SUSE Linux Enterprise; R&D (okir at suse.com)
SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany
GF: Jeff Hawn, Jennifer Guild, Felix Imendörffer, HRB 16746 (AG 
Nürnberg)