[Big_Al]

Hi,

Maybe a stupid question but is there any support for PHP 5.3.x and PHP 6.x?

I know these versions are in beta/rc and alpha stage but I like to think ahead and would like to put PHP 5.3.x in production as soon as it becomes stable.

Regards,

Big_Al

[nick]

[thg2k]

PHP 5.3.0 will hopefully be released on June 25th, 2009.

Any realistic plan on a ionCube Encoder release to support PHP 5.3.x?

[nick]

There's no official release date yet for PHP 5.3 support, and as PHP 5.3 is a major change and not a minor revision, it might be a while before hosts update and so wise to keep that in mind if wishing to use any new PHP 5.3 language features.
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Nick

[tsm]

Hello Nick,
Now that 5.3 is realeased do you have any timeframe for support of the encoder for 5.3?
I am developing something that might have to run on 5.3 hosts, too. My timeframe is in about 2-3 months. When's yours?

Greets,
Frank

[nick]

Later this year, but there's no release date yet. Have you also checked to see whether the hosting providers will be running 5.3 by then? It's possible that any who do not realise that PHP 5.3 is such a big change will be, but the shared hosts can understandably tend to be quite cautious when it comes to supporting major releases such as 5.3, preferring to let others test the water first. Our new Encoder product for 5.3 should be released before this, but it might be prudent to wait a good 6 months or so before releasing any code on PHP 5.3.
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Nick

[twhiting9275]

Stop passing this off the the host, do your job and release the decoders already!

Holding customers back to outdated, unsupported versions of php because you don't want to get on the ball is just horrific. People rely on your product, you should be one of the FIRST out there with an upgrade.

it's been a month already, get on the ball, do your jobs!

[esam]

I agree with twhiting9275. We need a release date so can plan accordingly. Decide to wait or abandon this tool all together.

Some of us don’t deal with hosting companies. 5.3 is a much better release and fixes a lot of issues, that is why we as developers are under a lot of pressure to migrate to 5.3 and the only thing stopping us is your tool.

So are you going to tell us when you are planning on supporting 5.3, or are you going to refund the remaining of our maintenance period? so can start looking for an alternative.

[twhiting9275]

I wish I could say this is the first time ioncube has done this, but it's not.

every major release of php sees the same thing from ioncube. Stall, stall, stall, and more stall. I could see this reaction if these releases didn't go through extensive alpha/beta/rc testing, but these DO go through testing for months, if not years at a time.

Even if they waited until RC was released to do something, they would have had 4 months to get their garbage together. That's plenty of time to get prepared.

[nick]

The work on PHP 5.3 support was started some time ago once we considered the 5.3 codebase to be sufficiently stable and frozen, however unlike all previous changes to the minor PHP version number, the 5.3 release is actually a new language and requires orders of magnitude more development and testing than was required in moving from 5.1. to 5.2, or even 5.0 to 5.1. With PHP 5.2 we were there with support from first release, several weeks ahead of Zend as it turned out, and historically we've always had Loader support within the first few days of release, but 5.3 is a new animal entirely.

The easiest thing would be for us to simply drop support for all versions of PHP prior to 5.3, and while that might suit a small minority, we have to consider the broader picture where end users expect to be able to run not just encoded PHP 5.3 code on a PHP 5.3 system, but code produced for earlier versions of PHP 5 or even PHP 4. If our solution was merely hiding and restoring source code at runtime then this would be straightforward, but when there are issues to deal with such as substantial changes to the internal architecture of PHP, new bytecode introduced, obsoleted bytecode, new language features, changes to how language structures are compiled such that bytecode in encoded files compatible with earlier versions of PHP will not run and requires analysis and patching on the fly by the Loader at runtime, and so on, a simple recompile and quick tweak to the codebase on a Friday afternoon isn't going to do it. And that's just the Loader. The Encoder for PHP 5.3 will be a new product as to support the new language requires integration of a whole new compiler, and is again a substantial amount of work.

So to sum up, as developers ourselves we can certainly understand the temptation to jump onto the latest technology bandwagon, although we're also experienced and seasoned enough to know when it's not a good idea to be first in the queue, and we'll announce our support for it in due course. Being in the middle of a major relocation effort and having a new office building built for us, things are busy, and on the development front, PHP 5.3 is right at the top of the project list and has been for a while. We also recognise that the majority of PHP users aren't familiar with the internals to appreciate why PHP 5.3 support isn't trivial, and why it's actually a major undertaking. So we'll allow a modicum of forum venting if it makes people feel better, although it won't be productive, will not make things happen any quicker, and might actually slow things down, so please bear that in mind.
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Nick

[twhiting9275]

LOL

That is about as uneducated response as I would expect from a company historically slow on the draw here.

There is no excuse for not having something out release day. Is it not your job to keep on top of these things? Of course it is.

Is php 5.3 a "minor release"? Did I hear someone in here say it was? No. So, you chose to ignore RC's, Betas and Alphas, and just do things slowly. That's not an acceptable or professional response.

[phping]

Thank you for all the interesting background regarding why you don't support PHP's current stable release yet. (It's been the stable release for over a month.) It's true, it's not always easy to stay on top of things.

Now, can you just give us the direct answer to the question we need the answer to:
- By what date will you commit to supporting PHP 5.3?
- Or, are you not yet at a place where you can commit, because you haven't finished the work and don't know how much more work it will take?

Again, thanks for all the background about your challenges. Now, going forward, can you just give us a direct answer: Will you support it, or not, and by what date will you support it? That's what we really need to know so we can make our own decisions accordingly. Many might find it irrational to invest today in your product since it's officially behind, unless there is a solid promise of a timeframe by which date that shortcoming will be fixed.

Maybe it's just a hard problem for you and it will take you 6 months before you can support the current PHP release. Or maybe you don't know if you can even do it by then. Whatever the situation is, please tell us! Give us a commitment, or tell us you just can't do that.

Thank you kindly.

[nick]

For the avoidance of doubt we'll put up a sticky post with our current position on 5.3 and future releases in the Loaders forum.

[nick]

As an update, we're pleased to announce that we have included a beta version of our Loader for PHP 5.3 in our latest Loader release for Linux x86.

This first release is for providing compatibility support, and while some providers have stated that they will be unable to support existing encoded files, and that scripts will need to be re-encoded to work with a PHP 5.3 optimiser when it becomes available, we have concentrated our efforts and worked hard to provide back compatibility for all the existing end users of ionCube encoded files when their servers move to PHP 5.3.

The ionCube Loader for PHP 5.3 aims to offer full support for executing already encoded PHP 5 files on PHP 5.3, and should also run most PHP 4 compiled code too! The Loader is currently at beta, but passes our own test suite and also tests with major applications such as phpMyAdmin and Drupal (one of the few fully PHP 5.3 compatible applications at this time). We'll be rolling out builds for other platforms in due course, and any suspected problems with support on PHP 5.3 should be directed to the helpdesk with a ticket so that we can investigate.
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Nick