PHP 5.4.0 : lang/php54

[Doug Barton]

On 5/21/2012 9:40 AM, Miroslav Lachman wrote:
> I think that the best will be to not have any default "php5" port and
> just use php52, php53, php54, php5X, php60... as we have apache20,
> apache22, apache24, or mysql50-server, mysql51-server, mysql55-server.
> 
> There is no default apache2 or mysql5-server, so there is no confusion
> what is / what will be installed.
> 
> Then it can be choosed in make.conf what version will be used as
> default, similar to WITH_MYSQL_VER=51 or APACHE_PORT=www/apache22

I have been advocating for this for years. IMO we shouldn't have *any*
unversioned ports for things that have multiple simultaneous versions
supported. I've actually done this for the things I support (most
notably bind*) for a long time, and have never had a single user complaint.

OTOH, the user confusion, broken systems, and generally huge amount of
hassle caused by moving the default version of an important port like
php to one that isn't compatible with the previous default only has
downsides.

In the days when the total number of ports, and the number of versioned
ports, were both much smaller, the idea of a "default" version made
sense. Neither has been true for a decade or more.

Doug

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