PHP5: Why doesn’t it become viral faster?

Too many ISPs do not wish/cannot install it.

[henry0]

This has been REALLY bugging me since a few months and is becoming even more of a mixed signals situation.

PHP5 is really offering more bangs for your free bucks!
The PHP community is usually jumping as fast as possible on the bandwagon
So what’s the problem here?

I see it lying on two levels: Users and ISPs
Users, PHP5 separates the coders from borrowers :)
Most available applications are written for 4 and are barely portable to PHP5 without being a coder.
As such many sites will miserably fell to open, or will look totally messed up.

ISPs are afraid of generating a whole bunch of calls for support
ISPs do have a hard time to offer both PHP flavors running since one of the version needs to run as CGI.
ISPs can possibly offer to run 5 within a Plesk 7.5, but not all use the last version.
Seems to be hard finding RH enterprise and PHP5.
Mostly “5” version is found in a Fedora environment.
Or but again this is reserved to high-tech-level users: Full root access and dedicated or collocated server is required to run any options.
On another hand the very few top ISPs do offer it
but the server cost for most users is two or three fold what they do expect paying for hosting services.

Your turn:
Why does it take so long?

[oneguy]

Most available applications are written for 4 and are barely portable to PHP5 without being a coder.

Why is that? My brother told me he had a script failing and thought it might be because his host upgraded to php5.

I said, "naw." I thought things like that were usually built to be backwards compatible.

[mcavic]

Most available applications are written for 4 and are barely portable to PHP5 without being a coder.

I haven't had any PHP 4 code that failed to run on PHP 5, but PHP 5 does produce warnings where PHP 4 didn't, and that causes it to generate 300 megs per day of log file on one of my apps. The warnings are easily correctable, but I haven't had a chance to go through all the code.

[henry0]

For example most of the shopping cart (Free) are not portable
And some of the “for a fee” neither are.
Many users that uploaded a “one size firs all scripts” are not able to apply any modif such as using $_POST instead of using HTTP_POST_VAR
And more...
Although if coded properly PHP4 will not cause any failure when used in PHP5.

But the present topic is not really about portability; which is not given, I wonder why so few ISP do not yet offer PHP5.

[2by4]

If I remember right php 5 has register globals off by default, which breaks probably 90% of scripts out there.

I believe that if you coded your php 4 well, without using globals, it will run fine, but if your stuff was sloppily coded it will fail. That's my guess as to why isps haven't upgraded, they don't want to deal with all the support calls those bad scripts would create.

I can't remember the other things that would trigger errors or warnings, but they're almost all security related I think, otherwise the scripts would run fine.

<added>Ah, henry has it too, if your scripts used deprecated elements in php 4, that won't run in 5.

That's why they won't upgrade, imagine the headaches as all those script kiddie scripts start breaking.

[henry0]

2by4
an ISP were I will keep hosting a few sites
will face TOMORROW that situation (which triggered my post)

-Although I am moving to a new dedicated server to better serve a few new clients -

I warned them about getting a Zillion calls...

My scripts have been since at leat a year ready for 5 :)

[physics]

They won't upgrade until enough time has lapsed that most of the existing popular scripts out there are php 5 compatible and also long enough that they can say to people with custom scripts "you've had plenty of time to update your code".

[oneguy]

they can say to people with custom scripts "you've had plenty of time to update your code".

They can say that, but it still won't stop the support calls / tickets.

I think if a host is planning to upgrade, and knows it will cause some problems, they should probably give a month or two notice, as well as listing some common proplems people might run into.

Generally speaking... wouldn't it be riskier to set up a custom script for php5 when you're still in a php4 environment?

I'm not trying to make a point there. I'm really interested in the answer, as well as the issues involved.

I'm obviously not a php coder, but have plenty of custom scripts. I can't imagine the amount of broken stuff I could wind up with, so I'd rather be proactive if possible.

[2by4]

I've already seen some of the better php script guys out there stopping php 4 development, now they offer php 4 versions of their scripts, and updates and new methods etc are only released in php 5, which won't run on php 4 servers since they use methods etc that don't exist in php 4. But any decently written php 4 script will run fine in php 5. Emphasis on 'decently' though, that's not common enough.

[physics]

They can say that, but it still won't stop the support calls / tickets.

Right but if they've waited long enough they'll "feel better" about pretty much brushing those people off ... and those people will not have much of an option to switch to a host with PHP 4 if all of the other hosts are upgrading then too ;)

[mcavic]

pretty much brushing those people off

That's a problem with shared hosting. They have to keep their servers fairly current, and the support people can't all be coders.

[henry0]

On one on the hosts I use (no dedicated server on that one)
They were supposed to turn the PHP5 switch on today
Since I am leaving for EU tomorrow I was wondering about the upgrade.
(Not really concerned; my applications are 5 ready!)

I discussed the upgrade with them months ago and I knew that everything discussed here would happen.
Today they tell me that due to an overwhelming bunch of sites running through problems the update is delayed....
Well this is the scenario I described, users that cannot perform the necessary script modif.
Some freelance programmers will get an increase in job offer :)