Does PHP still have to be installed as a CGI with MapServer 4.4?

[Bob Bruce]

My hosting provider has asked me this question in light of the statement
under the What's New section of the MapServer homepage that says:

" Lots of fixes to allow running of long-lived processes and in
multi-threaded environments (memory leaks, mutex locking, etc.)."

My hosting provider would much rather have PHP installed and running as an
Apache DSO and still give me access to PHP Mapscript.

Is it now safe and reliable to run PHP Mapscript with PHP running as an
Apache DSO?

the system that I am running this under is:
  Linux venus 2.6.9OpenITloguid #1 SMP Tue Nov 2 21:57:56 CST 2004 i686
with:
  Apache 2.0 Handler
and:
  MapServer version 4.4.0 OUTPUT=GIF OUTPUT=PNG OUTPUT=JPEG OUTPUT=WBMP
SUPPORTS=PROJ SUPPORTS=FREETYPE SUPPORTS=WMS_SERVER INPUT=TIFF INPUT=EPPL7
INPUT=JPEG INPUT=SHAPEFILE
and:
  PHP MapScript Version  ($Revision: 1.220 $ $Date: 2004/11/16 17:23:13 $)

thanks,
          Bob Bruce