[mapserver-dev] php-mapscript missing from Ubuntu 16.04 beta?

[Jeff McKenna]

PHPmapscript is very popular, and PHP7 support is a very important topic 
for MapServer users, server admins, and packagers (it boasts a huge 
performance improvement, and 64bit support, among other things).  I 
remember that earlier discussion on the users list, where I was mostly 
speaking to myself out loud how important this is to the MapServer 
community.  Fast forward to now, and it is right in our face: users need 
it bad, and packagers can't compile it, full stop.

In a perfect world we'd organize a code sprint, solely dedicated to this 
PHP7 effort.  It would be funded, and would likely span several weeks 
(the effort would of course, since it is my dream, include funded effort 
for packagers of all major platforms, documentation team, and testers, 
plus developers).  This is a huge effort.

Of course I am dreaming, but sometimes it can't hurt to speak of your 
dreams :)

I do remember back then taking a brief look into the code, of the Zend 
engine changes; I need to dedicate more time to that research.  But my 
gut instinct tells me that things changed so much in PHP7 that this will 
be a huge effort.

I have already begun preparations for building PHP7 on Windows, for the 
MS4W community, even though I know of this hard wall coming at the end 
of the process; I have already been working towards this.  I was worried 
that it was only me that is concerned with this huge effort, but I am 
glad to see this discussion happening finally.


-jeff



On 2016-04-05 2:20 PM, Lime, Steve D (MNIT) wrote:
> I  was wondering if this might be an excuse to move away from the hand-rolled PHP/MapScript to Swig. It seems Swig is not yet supporting PHP7 either, although it seems like they are working it. If the PHP7 internals are really that different then we're looking at a new MapScript module anyway. I'd think trying to maintain both versions with that older codebase would be challenging to say the least. Thoughts?
>
> Steve
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: mapserver-dev [mailto:mapserver-dev-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Sebastiaan Couwenberg
> Sent: Monday, April 04, 2016 2:49 PM
> To: mapserver-dev at lists.osgeo.org
> Subject: Re: [mapserver-dev] php-mapscript missing from Ubuntu 16.04 beta?
>
> On 04/04/2016 09:33 PM, Worth Lutz wrote:
>> What is needed to get php-mapscript working on php7?
>
> Team effort :-)
>
> https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/mapserver-users/2016-February/078689.html
>
> Kind Regards,
>
> Bas
>


-- 
Jeff McKenna
MapServer Consulting and Training Services
http://www.gatewaygeomatics.com/