[gdal-dev] New PHP bindings - php5-gdal

[Jean-François Gigand]

Hi,

2011/8/9 Daniel Morissette <dmorissette at mapgears.com>:
> On 11-08-09 04:04 AM, Peter Hopfgartner wrote:
>>
>> On 08/09/2011 12:32 AM, Jean-François Gigand wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I am writing a PHP 5 module providing bindings for GDAL and OGR.
>>>
>> This would be a very usefull addition to GDAL.
>
> We should add a link to it from the GDAL Wiki once the php5-gdal webpage is
> publicly available:
>
> http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/#GDALOGRInOtherLanguages

Great!
With a notice that these bindings are yet incomplete.
I will soon update the wiki to list all available classes, methods,
functions and constants.

Would be good to have an API doc in php.net-style, if that's easy to do.

I have a few questions about prototype guidelines and how the
php5-gdal API should conform to. Closer to the GDAL/OGR C++ API or
closer to PHP's best practices? For example, should the constants be
kept in the global space, or should they move to class constants?

I also have questions about error management (use exceptions?) and
whether values returned through reference args should be returned
instead (such as arrays).
So far, I have stayed as close as possible to the GDAL/OGR API.

Is there anyone experienced with this type of issues, a foot in PHP
and another in C++ or GDAL, that I could discuss with?

>
>>> It is GPL3-licensed and available here:
>>> http://projects.geonef.fr/projects/php5-gdal/wiki
>>>
>> I'm wondering if it would'nt be more apprioprato to use the same license
>> as GDAL itself, see http://www.gdal.org.
>>
>
> Ideally BSD (in my mind), or at the minimum LGPL to make it clear that PHP
> code using it will not be bound by the GPL.
>
> (It is not clear to me whether scripting function calls to a CPL module
> makes the calling code bound to GPL as well. BSD or LGPL would avoid the
> question.)

I should have asked prior advise about what license suits best.
I'm not a specialist, but I agree that GPL is too restrictive for such
a library.
Since this work is nothing compared to the (amazing) set a features
provided by GDAL, it would be coherent that it inherit from the same
license. Moreover, PHP frameworks like Zend's or Symfony have a
BSD-style license.

I checked the PECL repository and most packages appear to be released
under the PHP license (http://www.php.net/license/3_01.txt), which
seems to suits PHP itself better than third-party extension modules.

So, I'm ok with choosing X11/MIT, unless any other strong advise is expressed.

>
>> BTW: I'm not able to access to the above mentioned address.
>
> There seems to be a password protection.
>

So sorry, there were per-IP rules that mislead my verification. Fixed now.


Jean-François Gigand - Geonef
Paris, France - http://geonef.fr/


> --
> Daniel Morissette
> http://www.mapgears.com/
> Provider of Professional MapServer Support since 2000
>
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