Future of pecl ports

[Martin Wilke]

Hi all,

I've spent a lot of time on FreeBSD PHP and pecl ports this past
week, and have also been thinking about the future of these ports.

We now have 3 PHP versions in the tree (5.5, 5.6 and 7.0) and 7.0 is
not backwards compatible. This means a separate set of PHP 7.0 specific
versions of our PECL ports need to exist.

We can also expect additional PHP 7.x versions in the future, which
we currently expect will be backward compatible within all 7.x major
version releases.

a) Existing ports copied to create new ones named
   php70-pecl-name, or pecl-name-php70.

   pecl-name ports stay the same (only PHP 5.x)

b) Existing ports copied to create new ones named php5-pecl-name or
   pecl-name-php5.

   Existing pecl-name ports then updated to support the latest
   (php70) version only.

c) Existing ports copied to create new ones named php5-pecl-name or
   pecl-name-php5.

   Existing ports copied to create new ones named
   php70-pecl-name, or pecl-name-php70. pecl-name ports stay the same.

   We are left with pecl-name-php5 and pecl-name-php7.

   pecl-name ports go away.

Regarding (a) and (b) above, even though today PHP 7 is far from being
the 'default' version, at some point PHP 5.x will go away, and this will
mean having to go through the the pecl-* ports tree and rename all the
ports anyway.

Given the above, I am leaning towards option (X), but I'd like to open
a discussion and welcome your thoughts and feedback.

-- 
+-----------------oOO--(_)--OOo-------------------------+
With best Regards,
        Martin Wilke (miwi_(at)_FreeBSD.org)

Mess with the Best, Die like the Rest