[mapserver-dev] RFC 117 Question

Sun Feb 5 07:56:11 PST 2017

Hi Jeff, Steve,

Short answer: +1

Long answer:

I finally found time to go over the RFC and agree that it is the best 
way forward. Thank you Jeff on behalf of PHP users for taking the lead 
on it. It will unfortunately mean that existing scripts will break so we 
should have a clear section on this in the migration guide and hopefully 
that will make the maintenance easier in the future. I also agree that 
it is a great idea to rename the module as Thomas suggested. Perhaps a 
"PHP7 migration" wiki page could be setup as a community resource where 
users could document various migration issues and solutions as they go?

To answer your specific question Steve, yes I was involved with the 
inital PHP MapSCript implementation with Assefa, and then the PHP5 
upgrade later on with Alan, and I used to care a lot about backwards 
compatibility for the module and still do. However reality is that these 
days just like lots of people in our field we have moved from PHP to 
Python so there is less incentive to maintain the compatibility with the 
older API. (Plus I have less time for coding myself which also plays in 
the balance)

If there are enough users who care about PHP MapScript backwards 
compatibility then they could team up to help fund Jeff's work and allow 
him to work towards that goal, or contribute to the effort if they have 
developers in house, otherwise I think that Jeff's (unfunded?) work to 
support the default SWIG based API is more than anyone could expect. I 
think some did inquire about costs in the ticket or on the list in the 
past year so it may just be a matter of reaching out to them again.

Daniel

On 2017-02-02 3:39 PM, Stephen Woodbridge wrote:
> Correction: Thomas not Even made the suggestion about keeping both
> versions of php mapscript around.
>
> On 2/2/2017 3:07 PM, Stephen Woodbridge wrote:
>> Hi Jeff, Daniel,
>>
>> Daniel, I think you are probably the most knowledgeable person of the
>> subject of php mapscript. Weren't you involved with the origin
>> implementation?
>>
>> Regardless, I have not personally used any flavor of mapscript in about
>> 10+ yrs, so I'm not going to be much help. I raised the issue only
>> because historically, I remember that the php mapscript API differed
>> from the SWIG API. My presumption is that the PHP SWIG API will not be
>> 100% compatible with the old PHP mapscript API.
>>
>> This is for a major release, so backwards compat can be broken. I
>> strongly support moving forward with the PHP SWIG implementation. I do
>> not expect all old php mapscript to work under the SWIG interfaces. I do
>> not believe this should hold up the release, but others might disagree
>> on that.
>>
>> I believe Even, suggested keeping the old php api also, but deprecating
>> it and then removing it, but that sounds like a lot of additional work,
>> but maybe it isn't.
>>
>> Regarding documenting the changes, do we have a php mapscript test
>> suite? If so, this should break for each PHP SWIG incompatibility and
>> documenting how those issues were fixed to work on the new API should
>> give you all that you need. If we don't have a test suite, then that is
>> another issue and maybe one should get built.
>>
>> Best regards,
>>   -SteveW
>>
>> On 2/2/2017 2:04 PM, Jeff McKenna wrote:
>>> Hi SteveW,
>>>
>>> As we had discussed during the PSC meeting and noted in the RFC, the
>>> goal here is to move to a long-term supported method for supporting PHP
>>> in MapServer.  The timing is good in that SWIG now fully supports PHP 7,
>>> and, also the (unwritten) factor in Open communities: someone cares
>>> enough to propose this to the MapServer PSC - willing to do initial
>>> builds, testing, documentation (adding it to the migration guides, as
>>> mentioned in RFC and your message), and managing contributions to the
>>> code.
>>>
>>> It sounds like you are searching for more documented history, which is
>>> fine, but at some point we must get moving: release, get feedback &
>>> contributions, & improve.  From the number of devs offering their
>>> support through the ticket, it sounds like many are waiting to get their
>>> hands on some PHP7 support, and then add to it.  We already have several
>>> mapscripts handled by SWIG, and they have each 'extended' their own
>>> custom objects and methods (which will also come into our PHP SWIG over
>>> time).
>>>
>>> We cannot guarantee that everyone's existing PHP applications will work
>>> perfectly after an upgrade, but we can test, document the changes
>>> needed, and call for contributions to improve the compatibility support.
>>>
>>> Regarding the next steps: I did wait until the code sprint, as you can
>>> see, so, on Monday I'll bring this to a vote to the PSC through email,
>>> and give a 4-business-day voting period (longer than the normal 2 days,
>>> to accommodate the chaos of a code sprint).  There is nothing like a
>>> vote on an RFC to get feedback.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> -jeff
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 2017-01-19 11:46 AM, Stephen Woodbridge wrote:
>>>> Hi All,
>>>>
>>>> We discussed RFC 117: PHP 7 MapScript Support Through SWIG [1] and
>>>> had a
>>>> question.
>>>>
>>>> PHP mapscript has historically been a custom interface where the other
>>>> mapscript flavors have been SWIG based. There was discussion in the
>>>> past
>>>> about converting PHP to use SWIG, but that didn't at the time move
>>>> forward for some reason(s) like:
>>>>
>>>> * SWIG had issues with PHP?
>>>> * moving to SWIG would break exisiting PHP mapscript applications
>>>> * others?
>>>>
>>>> So my question is are these still issues?
>>>>
>>>> With the release 7.0 we can have breaking changes, but they should be
>>>> documented in the migration guide if needed.
>>>>
>>>> Since I have not read and major discussion on this, my presumption is
>>>> that this is no longer an issue.
>>>>
>>>> -Steve W
>>>>
>>>> [1] http://mapserver.org/development/rfc/ms-rfc-117.html
>>>>
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>>> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/mapserver-dev
>>
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Daniel Morissette
http://www.mapgears.com/
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