Re: php5 branch ?

Hi -

...

Hi -

I'm very impressed with roundcube and would like to suggest it as our
replacement webbmail platform at work.  Great project!

I was wondering whether there is any interest in a PHP 5.1-only

version of this software. I would be very willing to help port the software to PHP5, using exceptions, PDO, etc., since I will most probably be doing an in-depth code review anyway. Is there any interest in a PHP5-only branch? From a developer perspective, I think it makes for a significantly more debuggable & maintainable (and, in some ways, secure) codebase, but I understand there also are (a lot) of folks still running PHP4. (Not sure if many roundcube users are also running PHP4?)

Regards -
Hans

It's already PHP 5 ready... look at the source code. You've got the PHP5 OO class layout with __construct and such. The only thing it doesn't have is the "public" or "private" spaces for functions and variables.

I am running it on PHP 5.1, so I know that it is PHP5-ready. What I'm suggesting is to change the architecture to make use of advanced PHP5 object model, PHP5 error handling, the new PDO db abstraction layer (instead of DB or MDB2), and other things that are improved in PHP 5.1.

Also, since PHP5 is such a waste (as PHP6 will come out soon enough in like '07-ish) there's no need to do it. RC is much better to be as compatible as possible (which it is now) with most versions of PHP rather than funneling down to only one version, and having two separate code bases for the same project.

I disagree that PHP5 is a "waste", as it provides huge improvements in OO over PHP4, but I can certainly see the point that RC needs to be compatible w/ PHP4 + PHP5 for maximum market.

What you're asking just isn't feasible. I'm sure that if you wanted to make your own installation PHP5 only, that's fine, but for RC distribution purposes, it should be 4/5 compatible and not one or the other. But that's just my opinion.

Yes, obviously this would need to be something that RC team wanted to do. If you represent that team, then I understand the answer to be "no" :)

My perspective is that RC is a super-slick webmail interface, the likes of which just doesn't exist in the PHP world. My dream would be to find a webmail application that has a frontend that is slick like RC's and a an backend that uses PHP5's advanced OO to make for a more extensible & maintainable application. There are a number of excellent OO frameworks for PHP[5], and the language improvements in PHP5 make it possible to prevent the side-effects of return-based error handling, prevent assign-by-ref bugs, improve resource cleanup, etc. Not to mention the code reduction, performance benefit, improved security, etc. of using PDO instead of DB/MDB2.

I guess when I spell it out, it's clear that what I'm proposing is more of a fork than a branch :)

Hans