On Sun, Jun 02, 2002 at 11:53:37PM +0200, Jonas Meurer wrote:
> I think debian isn't that good for webservers at the moments. The apache
> packages are quite good in my eyes, at least apache-ssl (I don't know the
> other), but there are no real standards at the moment.
> One (IMO very good) example is the php include_path. some packages ask the
> user to add /path/to/project_include/ into the php.ini. Then the files can be
> included direct with include("filename.php"), but it's predictable that
> conflicts follow (different packages, includefiles with the same name etc).
> Other packages ask to add /path/to to the php.ini and then include files with
> include("packages_name/filename.php"). I think that's a very better solution
> because there can be no conflicts. Every packagename is only given one time,
> so the includepath is always uniquely.
> The best solution would IMO be a global includepath, standard in the
> include_path at php.ini, like /usr/lib/php/, and packages are only allowed to
> make subdirs like /usr/lib/php/package_name. Then there wouldn't be this
> problem any longer with adding to php.ini and so on.
That would be /usr/share/php/, not /usr/lib/php/. PHP scripts are
architecture-independent data.
There is movement in the direction of such a solution. I've spoken with
the maintainer of the PHP4 packages, and we are both aware that there is
currently a lack of structure for packages relating to PHP. An effort
has begun to provide that structure, by codifying best practices into a
mini PHP policy. I think it would be futile to further discuss the
current problems until that document is further along: as I said, we're
well aware of what the problems are, it's now simply a question of
rolling our sleeves up and getting them fixed.
I do not, BTW, believe it should be mandated that all packages create
subdirectories under /usr/share/php/. No other scripting language
places such a restriction on its packages. Using common sense to
resolve namespace conflicts should be all that's required.
You did mention that some packages "ask the user to add
/path/to/project_include/ into the php.ini". Can you name specific
packages that do this? This is clearly wrong, as it pollutes the
include namespace for all PHP scripts.
> Also I would say that projects are only allowed to make subdirs in
> /usr/lib/cgi-bin, not to place scripts direct there, like wdg-html-validator
> does (/usr/lib/cgi-bin/validate.cgi).
Again, there is no precedent for such a strict requirement.
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer
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