PHP 5.4.0 : lang/php54

[Miroslav Lachman]

Doug Barton wrote:
> 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.


Maybe it's time to make the rules and write them in to the Porter's 
Handbook and/or Committers guide. I don't know who can make this decision.

Miroslav Lachman