staying neutral

PHP, Help from Companies & Licenses

noreply@blogger.com (helly) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 01:03:00 +0000

Having been at a Conference a few days ago, I was reminded of something. I have several times been asked how companies can help PHP. And my typical answer is about contributing tests and making sure PHP runs under or with their products, be that operating systems, databases or other back ends; or tools in any way. However I just updated the PHP Version info in a few hundred source files from 'PHP Version 5' to 'PHP Versoin 6'. And I also found that the License file lacked an update to 2009. And at this point you might already guess what the addition to my typical answer is. Why can Zend not simply change the license of the Zend Engine to PHP License?

Why do we want this?

Becasue it creates issues with using PHP. And we do not even inform people about it, because we are silent about this fact.

So is there a reason why this has not happened already long ago?

Some people claim it is because of ownership. So one question actually is who owns the code. And being a friend of numbers and cryptic shell code, here is some data:

$> cvs annotate Zend 2>/dev/null |
   grep -v '(changelo ' |    awk '/[0-9.]*.*\(/ {
     L++
     C[substr($2,2)]++
   }
   END {
     for(n in C) {
       printf "%5d %4.1f%% %s\n", C[n], C[n] * 100 / L, n
     }
   }' |
   sort -r

36863 25.6% dmitry
29428 20.4% andi
15323 10.6% tony2001
 9541  6.6% stas
 6894  4.8% andrei
 6665  4.6% zeev
 6504  4.5% felipe
 5711  4.0% helly
 5381  3.7% scottmac
 5341  3.7% sebastia
 2760  1.9% iliaa
 2607  1.8% nlopess
 1731  1.2% derick
 1550  1.1% sniper
 1108  0.8% kraghuba

I skipped changelog and everyone who contributed less than 1000 lines got stripped manually (which makes it 15 lines).

Does that mean Zend owns the engine? In terms of the License they do. In terms of contribution I do not. Simply because other people like me contributed does not mean we share ownership. Not even if there wasn't a single line written by Zend employees left. So is the other way round true, and Zend owns the engine because employees have written the engine? Also not, because we do not know whether they did it in their spare time or were paid for it. So why does Zend own the engine? Simply put, the License file says so.

And there is another area that uses an arbitrary License. The TSRM library. Here is the data (again top 15 lines only):

957 21.5% andi
804 18.0% zeev
785 17.6% dmitry
402  9.0% dbeu
384  8.6% sascha
242  5.4% sebastia
167  3.7% rvenkat
136  3.1% tony2001
 99  2.2% wez
 65  1.5% dreid
 63  1.4% iliaa
 53  1.2% stig
 53  1.2% helly
 50  1.1% sniper
 28  0.6% sesser

The fun is that hardly anyone but Windows users need this library. Yet it interferes with using PHP in the same way the Zend License does. Simply because it is an arbitrary License.

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New York, Part II

noreply@blogger.com (helly) — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 04:42:00 +0000

I was really happy after arriving at the apartment building, that for the coming week I got a very nice apartment in the Chelsea area. There is a Whole Food market just at the opposite corner. And also a lot of restaurants and bars. So, being hungry but not too much after the Sugar Shack, or should I say Sock, I set out for something smaller. Usually one would find that hopeless, since in USA people seem to always confuse Quality and Quantity. But heck I found a place called brgr on 7th Avenue between 26th and 27th street. I somehow got the feeling that they wrote the name that way, to hint that they actually would not hold size over everything else. Inside I found myself corrected, not only did they obviously care not so much for size, but they really seemed to care about quality. Heck they even get their pattys made from grass fed cows. Yeah, we live in such a perverted world that most beef you eat comes from cows that eat other animals and a bunch of chemicals for drinks. Originally I planned to have a Jamba Juice, which I happily also found next to the apartment building, but then brgr offered a Blueberry - Pomegranate Milkshake. Hmmmm, delicous.

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PHP Quebec 2009

noreply@blogger.com (helly) — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 04:26:00 +0000

Unfortunately this year I could not go snowboarding before PHP Quebec 2009 Conference because of my work schedule. So I flew from NYC to Montreal only on Tuesday afternoon. The conference yet again changed the Hotel and was this year held in the Hilton Montreal Bonaventure. Personally I liked the Sofitel better as a hotel, but for the conference the new hotel is definitively a better choice. We had more rooms, generally more space and - a working WIFI. Probably the first conference with a working WIFI. Thanks Anna, Sylvain and Yann. The conference itself was good as always and we had a lot of fun during the evenings - of course. I gave two planned talks and I had to jump in for my dear friend Sara, who could not come herself because she got sick right before the conference. Luckily my friend Johannes agreed to join me for the jump in on the extension writing talk. And we really both enjoyed the Worst PHP Practice talk, for which actually my wife Caitlin had the idea - thanks for that (and many other things). The talks are online:

Other talks were luckily not too much about PHP 5.3. Instead it turns out that people are interested in the current stable platform PHP 5.2 and are willing to get us core developers more time to get the new features, most notably closures , namespaces and Phar done right (to name a few I contributed to). If you are still interested in more about PHP 5.3, check out Johannes' talk . Something else of interest; I was happy to hear and see that other presenters used Google Chart API in their talks for examples.

At the last night of the conference we went to Le Deux Pierrots. And of course we finished the conference week with a visit to Sucrerie de la Montagne. And believe it or not, we poured sugar syrup onto soup and coffee as well as over mashed potatoes, meet - and - sugar pie. Finally in the afternoon I had to leave to the airport - learning from last years stress with getting the plane, this year I booked a later flight.

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New York, Part I

noreply@blogger.com (helly) — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 03:38:00 +0000

I spent last week in New York City but was not so happy because of the apartment I got. It used direct steam heat with an outlet for every radiator. And of course my room also had an opening to the outside for the cooling device. So I got a combination of very dry hot air and very dry cold air into my micro room - so large, it barely had space for the bed. So I ended up with three days of nose bleeding. But I had to work far far too much anyway, so I did not see much of the apartment anyway. The neighborhood was o.k. Actually quite close to central park. But as it was cold I didn't make use of that. There was also a good breakfast place, with really nice bread. Anyway, hopefully next weeks stay will be better.

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Seven Things About Me - Tagged by Andi

noreply@blogger.com (helly) — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 13:27:00 +0000

So my friend Andi tagged me and here are my seven confessions.

1) I really love coffee. I always have, and luckily I work for a company that has extremely decent coffee and coffee equipment - at least in the office I was hired into. So I don't possess a real coffee machine other than the Senseo, one I got from my parents so that they can get coffee on a visit.

2) Just like Andi, I also have an issue with shaving. And just like him, neither Army nor Wife turned me into a responsible daily shaver. We'll see if our son Felix Alexander, whom we expect in May, will convince me to change my unruly ways.

3) Speaking of the Army. I was a tank commander and got to be the first Lieutenant to be named in a brigade meeting to conclude a several day training, for having parked my tank in the mud. That alone was not so much of an accomplishment, but having performed my duties while taking about a day to get the tank out under supervision of every high-ranked officer in the area was.

4) I have always done lots of sports of all kinds. I even became a licensed trainer during my university time and gave fitness and aqua fitness classes. For some time I did up to 20 hours of sports per week including Aerobics and Step Aerobics, and I even performed in a few shows. I ran a marathon but nowadays limit myself to snowboarding and inline skating. Probably because I spend too much time on Open Source. And working for a company where internally everything is like Open Source does not help either.

5) My university, having several professors directly connected to CERN, was one of the first to participate in the Internet. So I became interested and trained my colleagues to some success. So much success, in fact, that I had to write a web server myself so that the company could ship the now HTML documentation to their clients, which did not have the slightest clue what this was all about nor had heard of a webserver at all.

6) I once got a call from my very good friend, Rainer, while sitting at breakfast with all my friends, saying, "hey pour me a coffee, I'll grab you in a minute." After the coffee, we drove to a company run by friends and I was asked to say yes to everything. Apparently a major German television channel had problems with one of their internet apps. So we spent Saturday morning to Monday morning trying to fix it. Well, I said "it's not fixable but can be redesigned" and so I did. After 2 days without sleep, I took a nap before teaching an aqua fitness class that evening. Coming back into the office afterwards, I ran into a meeting and hearing 'Money doesn't matter', I sat down, listened and became a freelancer that week.

7) I lost weeks and weeks of my university time playing Ultimate Underworld IV. Having killed the dude that can repair the sword that is the only weapon to kill the last opponent, I couldn't even finish it. That's why I do not play video games.

And here are the rules I'm supposed to pass on to the following bloggers:

Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some weird.
Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

And as for chaining, in no particularly significant order:

The D3 arrived. Part III: Software, DXO sucks

noreply@blogger.com (helly) — Sun, 18 May 2008 16:27:00 +0000

Before I bought my Nikon D200 I was using ACDSee and Paint Shop Pro for corrections from pictures taken with my point-and-shoot pocket cameras. However I used both pretty rarely only. So when I bought the D200 I asked several of my friends what software to use to do RAW to JPEG conversion. Many of them suggested I have a look at DXO. And in fact DXO is awesome in theory and also—if you can get it to work and happen to own the correct lenses—in practice. Unfortunately it is kind of impossible to use the software. Its user interface is the worst piece of crap I have ever seen until then. I hoped the update to the newest version would make it any better. But guess what, it became even more unstable and useless. Well the results, if you get any, are still awesome, yet kind of impossible to get. Especially with the Nikon D3. It detects the camera and lens and still refuses to do anything with the images. And before you wonder, there is no way whatsoever to make DXO work on Windows 64. They think that they produced such a holy grail of software that copy protection goes over everything. And people like them wonder why their software gets cracked... Enough anyway, DXO is gone.

So I decided on trying the demo software that Nikon ships with the D3. Demo? Yes, that's right. You just got a damn expensive camera and Nikon didn't even bother to give you a piece of software that allows you to make use of the camera's RAW format. But, well, that is no loss because Nikon managed to produce a piece of crap that is impossible to use. Right, Nikon Capture NX comes with a user interface that is indeed worse than DXO—and I thought that would be impossible.

So I tried ACDSee pro and after the update that makes it able to handle newer RAW formats, the batch processor works fast and produces nice color and exposure corrections. Unfortunately, you won't get the nice lens/camera combination fix-up that DXO would provide. All in all, ACDSee is a very nice and fast organizing and viewing software that also allows a wide variety of corrections. And the user interface is pretty nice as well. Well done. Even after about ten years of using ACDSee I still use it. And today I actually use it more than ever before. One thing I use this for is red-eye corrections. The others are the mentioned batch converter and I also like the crop feature. Last but not least, I have always used it for image rotation, a thing ACDSee used to be famous for.

Next step, there must be something that allows for more corrections. So I tried Adobe Lightroom 2.0 beta. And again a nice very easy to use user interface. It also supports importing much more to my likings. So when you connect the camera you get an import dialog that allows to import by date shot. Something I really like: organizing by set. And if there are more sets on a day, then you simply select by picture and import into different folders. The next thing is the browser which is as fast as the one from ACDSee just not so powerful. I chose the importer of Lightroom, which automatically applies some EXIF tagging, to mark all my picture as my pictures—yes, the D3 does not allow this. All I am missing here is lens detection from EXIF information and turning that into tags. For that, I have some perl/php scripts but am usually to lazy to use them. After importing the images you can apply corrections. You can copy corrections applied to one picture to other ones and it actually works. When done with corrections, the images can be converted in a batch processor while the application still works! And if you put more pictures up for conversion, Lightroom simply adds these pictures to the stack of the batch processor. And by the way, Lightroom has a nice black&white conversion.

The third software I use is Paint Shop Pro. Several years ago I started using this software to do pixel corrections or to generate small images for web sites. In the meantime the software specializes more and more as a photography solution. It too has a usable browser and a bunch of filters. I used it, for instance, to cut pictures free—as in, make the background transparent.

My current work flow is as follows. I import images from the camera using Lightroom. I do so by set into a directory. The directory name is the date in YYYYMMDD format followed by a set description. I then use Lightroom to do color and exposure corrections as well as cropping. Alternatively I use ACDSEE to do full automatic conversion to JPEG. Sometimes I do so to speed the process up. In general, I prefer to apply as few corrections as possible. That is, I try to do nice shots in RAW with automatic WB. I select pictures for upload in several ways. First, I sometimes delete already in the camera, then I delete already before conversion to JPEG. Both ACDSee and Lightroom are fast enough to allow for browsing and deletion using only RAW. When ending up with lots of pictures in a set with several being more or less the same, I use the rating support of either software for selection. Once conversion to JPEG is done, I select once more. This time, however, I only delete the JPEGs, keeping the RAW images. The last step is uploading. For this I use Flock's built-in uploader to flickr.

The reason for using flickr is simple. It was working for me prior to anything else by the time my D200 made me constantly run out of space on my own server. Today I would definitively use Panoramio instead. And the reason for that is simple too. It has a very nice integration with maps.google.com (check out the new 'More...' button) and they are way better than Yahoo maps.

Conclusion. ACDSee, Lightroom and PaintShopPro all have a usable user interface, especially the former two. Once Lightroom 2 gets released I will buy it, probably bundled with PhotoShop. I haven't used that in a long time. But the combination sounds like a very good idea. And hopefully it is better than having to switch to something completely different like PaintShopPro. I tried a bunch of uploader tools, but the only one that works for me is Flock.

Final note. DXO in theory is an awesome tool. But it is in fact completely useless crap, it does not work, the support is unbelievable ridiculous incompetent and updates and upgrades seem to make it worse.

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The D3 arrived. Part II: Pros and cons

noreply@blogger.com (helly) — Mon, 12 May 2008 10:40:00 +0000

Unpacking the box—and being happy! The Nikon D3 is just an unbelieveable camera—or toy for that matter. Anyway it just feels right. A bit heavy maybe but, well.

Most things feel just as they should be and there is hardly anything wrong with the camera. So I spend a few days shooting, collecting all the things I do not like. Here goes:

1) First of all, Nikon obviously tried to give the D3 a superior strap compared to the D200 or the D300. To me it is just too broad; the old one was much better. So the first thing after buying the Nikkor 24-120/VR was a new strap!

2) I even read the book (aka manual)—but Nikon indeed removed my favorite pre-shutter mirror-flipping mode. Of course, the D3 has a mode where you can flip the mirror with first pushing on the shutter release button and then taking the shot with a second push. But what about the nice mode where you just press once and the camera waits a split of a second? It is an awesome feature, it usually gave me one additional stop.

3) Nikon still refuses to care for its customers. I mean you can now add some crappy signing to the pictures. But hey, I still cannot claim the camera to be mine. That's unbelievable. The EXIF standard has both author and copyright tag (though sadly combined in one tag). And of course the camera does not ask me to point it to my PGP or whatever key. Without that what is the signing good for? I guess it makes people that have no clue feel better. For all the rest, this is useless becasue you can always get rid of this signing, post-process the picture and re-create it. And of course this includes changing the author and copyright info some software adds for you. Photokina is ahead, if I have time for it I will once again ask about this insanity.

4) There is no ISO setting below 100, not even with stupid filtering in the camera. Not that I personally will ever miss it though.

5) The HDMI output is pretty poor. On preview it uses the thumbnails, in other words it has very low resolution and the output simply looks crappy. Hey, I have a 46" screen and I would expect that people buying a D3 and use the HDMI would use nothing smaller. Now it gets a bit better when changing to a slide show. However there is no 1080p mode and the 720p mode looks in my opinion a tad bit better than the 1080i mode. Either way, not worth buying an HDMI cable. This said, it does not really matter that the camera allows neither 1920x1080 nor 3840x2160 resolution.

6) When doing a firmware update, you have to upload the firmware files separately to exactly one CF card. When using both CFs, the camera simply refuses to accept any firmware file and when finding both it always selects the same one. At least the order in which you do the update does not matter. Well so far it does not.

7) Once again the focus points are all around the center of the sensor. They only spread so much that you get about one focus point per golden cut. Meaning one probably uses about 9 focus points. As a tip for Nikon, if the corner focus points are used extremely often, then that is probably based on the fact that people are missing points closer to the edges.

8) The function button still cannot do everything. And of course it cannot do pre-shutter mirror-flipping. Simply becasue the mode is gone (see 2).

9) The camera does not allow to add a 'normal playback' mode as Caitlin called it. Meaning you cannot set the camera to show some information while having at least one screen without any data (over-exposure areas, focus points, etc.).

10) The view finder is really awesome. But the rubber, the eyepiece you put, well, to your eye, is simply bad. So the next things I ordered was a DK-17M and a DK-19.

Now all of the above are really minor complaints. And there is a hell lot of good things to mention. Just to mention a few highlights:

1) The result at ISO 1600 is simply great! Yes, this is why I bought the camera. And it makes me really happy. And just as many other people said before, simply keep the D3 at ISO 1600 at all time, unless you have to use lower ISO because of aperture constrains.

2) The Nikkor 50/1.4D is finally usable.

But it still is a lens that I have to replace. Now, Sigma just announced the new 50mm F1.4 EX DG HSM which could be an alternative as well as the Zeiss Planar T* 1.4/50. But maybe the answer is the Nikkor 85/1.4D or the Zeiss Planar T* 1.4/85.

3) The view finder is just amazing. Bright and large! And even I can do manual focusing now! This makes operating my Lensbaby much easier.

4) The display is insanely bright. So bright that I usually turn it down to -3 or -2 setting, where the range is -3 to +3.

5) The camera shows all necessary information on its displays. That includes showing the ISO setting on the additional display below the main display, making it, even for me, hard to forget fixing the ISO. The two additional LCDs also show which CF slot holds a CF card and which of the two are in use.

6) The camera shows the lightmeter vertically right to the picture in the viewer. This is much better than in the D200 where it is below the picture. It also allows the camera to display more information which I really appreciate.

7) The portrait shutter release can be locked. So it does not matter where you place the right hand for landscape shots.

8) The D200 had a 'last used' settings tab. Now the D3 has a favorites tab which is fully customizable. I use both and like the new version much better as my favorite entries don't get shifted around just because I used them.

9) The D3 usually does not need a flash. And thus it has none integrated. The SB-800 can be mounted and works just great. The only sad thing is that the D3 also has no integrated flash remote control either. This speaks for a SU-800 Wireless Speedlight Commander which is part of the R1 Wireless Close-Up Seedlight System.

10) The Nikkor 105/2.8/VR suddenly got a much nicer range and even serves as a very good portrait lens now.

The pro list could be extended a lot. But actually there was not so much to improve when coming from a D200.

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The D3 arrived. Part I: Now I need a new lens

noreply@blogger.com (helly) — Sun, 11 May 2008 20:42:00 +0000

The camera change from Nikon D200 to Nikon D3 with its sensor size change from APS-C aka DX to full frame aka FX unfortunately made the purchase of a new all rounder lens imminent. And so I switched from 'AF-S DX VR Zoom-NIKKOR 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G IF-ED' to 'AF-S VR Zoom-NIKKOR 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6G IF-ED'.

The picture was shot using the 'AF-S VR Micro-NIKKOR 105mm f/2.8G IF-ED' on the D3 and post-processed with Adobe Lightroom 2.0 beta and Corel Paint Shop Pro XI.

Both lenses have a UV filter mounted. The 18-200/VR has a B&W filter while the 24-120/VR has a Hoya filter. Both lenses come with VR and share the same aperture range, that is f/3.5 to f/5.6. Also the wide range is very compareable as the 18mm on the DX camera turns into 27mm on 36mm film, while the 24mm are already correct in terms of 36mm film equivalent, when mounted on the D3.

The unfortunate difference is the telephoto range. Here the 200mm DX format turns into 300mm on 36mm film. And that is way more than the 120mm of the FX lens.

Interestingly, the switch does not come with a handling difference - at least not in lens handling. Both lenses nearly look identical and share a more or less identical housing. But as to be expected, the 18-200 goes out much more than the 24-120 does. Sharpness-wise it appears both lenses deliver the same quality. Meaning they do a great everyday job but do not take very sharp pictures. Since even the flowers of both lenses are nearly identical, I had to check the internet to figure out which one belongs on which lens. The HB-35 has broader fins and belongs on the 18-200. The 24-120 is a tad bit wider, so it takes the HB-25 with its smaller fins.

I actually bought the camera and lens in Switzerland where prices are insanely high - though yet much lower than for instance in Germany. So I spent some time searching for shops with reasonable prices. I found digitec in Zürich and ars-imago in Zug, which was not too far away and unlike digitec, where I bought the camera, had the lens in stock.

I had to go twice to digitec because the first time they figured they could not get enough money from my ATM cards. It turned out that my two German ones only allow higher charges in Germany - or they just don't care so that you pay with Credit Card. For that however they happily charge 2.75% extra. That is absolutely ridiculous and of course unacceptable. So I came back the next day after visiting my bank in the morning. And believe me, it really feels strange running around with 6k in cash.

When I decided for the lens and found ars-imago I chose them for one reason. It was the cheapest place with the lens in stock that was reachable by car. There was one shop where I could have ordered the lens on-line. Including charges for shipping I would have paid the same, well there also is the credit card insanity. So I either would have had to wait longer or pay this unbelievable special Swiss insanity extra charge. So I happily drove to Zug after reading that there was the last lens of its kind waiting for me to be picked up. However when I arrived they told me with the typical Swiss smile, that my lens was sold half an hour ago. That means that those idiots sold my lens just after they sent me the confirmation that I can pick up the lens on the same day. They assured me the lens would come next business day which was two days later. So I lost one day for experimenting - dammit! The least thing one would expect now - of course - is that they would give a bit of a rebate for making me drive twice. But nothing - that's Switzerland. Lesson learned, never buy anything from ars-imago again.

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Optimus Maximus finally arrived

noreply@blogger.com (helly) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 16:54:00 +0000

Sooooo, the Optimus Maximus finally arrived and works.

The keys are a bit large, so it probably takes a bit of time to get used to the new keyboard. But for all my online friends - at least the space key works. What I do not like so much so far, is that the keys actually make some noise while typing.

The Software however is in a very early stage and does not allow what I want. Well, it was the same with the Mini Three in the first months, so we'll see. What I am missing is the ability to put German Umlauts with some alt/Ctrl/Shift combination on the US keyboard layout.

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PHP once again to participate in GSoC

noreply@blogger.com (helly) — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 23:23:00 +0000

I am very happy that this year PHP once again got selected as a mentoring project in the Google Summer of Code Program.

The PHP team already put up a list of ideas that students could pick up. Of course students are also more than welcome to propose their own ideas. Either way student applications start on Monday, March 24th. More information on the GSoC program can be found here.

I am looking forward to a fruitful summer 2008 for the PHP project.

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PHP on RE2C

noreply@blogger.com (helly) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 23:29:00 +0000

Finally.

After years on working on RE2C to make it stable and ready to replace flex-based scanners, work on replacing PHP's flex-based scanner with a RE2C-based one has begun. Actually the work was started by Nuno Lopes and Scott MacVicar on 14th of February 2008, after I happily informed them that I considered RE2C ready for this task. I joined the work a day later, contributed a few ideas and helped with minor RE2C improvements. Today on the 15th of February we can already run make test and get over 98% PASS.

This encouraged me to spend a bit more time on RE2C and release 0.13.2, which you can download here (sorry but it is on sourceforge).

Thanks to Scott, we also have a subversion and Trac setup here, where you can follow our development. If you want to experiment yourself, or even help in our efforts, then you can checkout from svn://whisky.macvicar.net/php-re2c.

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Whether to INI or not

noreply@blogger.com (helly) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 22:03:00 +0000

So I've had enough of different PHP versions compiled in different modes (ZTS or DEGBUG) and having to change the php.ini file every now and then on my dev machines. So I added conditional INI support:

[IF (ZEND_DEBUG_BUILD == true) && (ZEND_THREAD_SAFE == true)]
zend_extension_debug_ts=/usr/src/${PHP_BRANCH}/xdebug.so
[ELSEIF ZEND_DEBUG_BUILD == true]
zend_extension_debug=/usr/src/${PHP_BRANCH}/xdebug.so
[ELSEIF ZEND_THREAD_SAFE == true]
zend_extension_ts=/usr/src/${PHP_BRANCH}/xdebug.so
[ELSE]
zend_extension=/usr/src/${PHP_BRANCH}/modules/xdebug.so
[ENDIF]

I used square brackets for the conditionals, as it seemed the way that comes with the least potential for INI handling. This is because right now we ignore section names anyway.

The patch can be downloaded here and allows for the following:

String comparison using operators === and !==.
All other operators convert left and right operands to integers first, just as INI handling would do for value evaluation.
Support for operators <, <=, >, >=, ==, !=, && and ||.
Braces can be used to force an evaluation order.
No support for unary operator ! or ternary operator ?:.
No support for functions.
No direct boolean evaluation, that is operators are required.
Conditions can be nested.

If you are interested in this stuff, you can either comment on this blog entry or follow the discussion on internals@php.net here.

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We want PDO! Don't we?

noreply@blogger.com (helly) — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 20:25:00 +0000

So after the initial uproar on last week's attempts to put parts of PHP development under the terms of a CLA (read proposal here), a bunch of us actually spent some time in finding solutions for one way or the other. I don't want to bother you with more details on the why.

But, one thing for certain, we want PDO.

As the reasoning, this was discussed enough, so I'll jump directly to my ideas for a solution.

Develop a PECL CLA that can optionally be used for PECL projects.
If necessary, adapt the PHP License, so that it works nicely together with the CLA.
The projects that want a CLA can choose between the PHP License or LGPL.
Change the PECL web site so that projects can opt-in to using the CLA.
Arrange it so that projects cannot drop the CLA flag.
Add a user/CLA/project table to the PHP user database, and use this in CVS ACLs.
Create a new CVS module php-default.
Move all extensions that can be disabled and are not required for others to PECL.
Link everything under php-src plus a default selection of extensions to php-default.
Let us once and for all ban CLAs from php-src aka PHP core.
Start developing PDO as part of CVS module php-src.

Sorry for not writing this earlier. So how does this idea sound? Check out answers to the mail here.

The Borg Queen to Kathryn Janeway: 'Do as all pragmatists do, compromise'. And it is no secret that I am a pragmatist.

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PDO to turn PHP into closed software development?

noreply@blogger.com (helly) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 22:01:00 +0000

These are my very private thoughts on what is going on with PDO.

First of all, having decent database support is becoming more and more important to PHP because there is hardly any PHP application left that does not have some kind of database backend. And for that exact reason, a few people started PDO some time ago.

Technically speaking, right now we are on the second PDO version - well starting to count unix-like from version 0.

The initial PDO developed by Sterling Hughes and me never made it into PHP. It was, however, the base for the initial version we later put into PHP, as it proved that our main design goals worked: unified API through a base class with different database back-ends connected through drivers, where drivers are separate extensions that sit on top of the main PDO extension. After some discussions at conferences - such as the International PHP Conference and LinuxTag - it was Wez Furlong who came up with the initial implementation of PDO version 1. It had a nicely worked-out callback infrastructure that could support a bunch of database backends. And, indeed, we got a few of those in short time.

So what we have right now is a more or less working PDO that suffers from the following:

Some databases have suboptimal drivers (often slower than native extensions).

No support from database vendors to help improve drivers (for various reasons).

A maintainance nightmare, where PDO in different PHP branches is completely out of synch.

Limited functionality in PDO (like missing metadata support).

Missing developers for the main PDO extension.

So the main questions are: how do we attract more developers to PDO, and how do we improve PDO? And all this to boot without scaring away current developers.

Now thanks to Wez for the PDO 1 specification effort and talking to a bunch of database vendors, trying to integrate them into PDO development. Because only with a good documentation can we make any progress whatsoever, be it a full rewrite or just continuous development. Btw, my thanks also go to the countless people that wrote the PDO documentation.

However, I completely disagree with the way in which PDO 2 was started. The main reason is that throughout the preparation phase not a single developer had any clue whatsoever of what was going on - not even that something was going on at all! If that is not the case, then obviously those who did know were under some kind of NDA. It actually appears that there is a PDO development mailing list, which I was not aware of until two days ago (for PDO 0 we used my private mail server). And even if I had been aware of it, it still would not have been the PHP way of doing things - where the PHP way is doing development openly, or at least openly after a short startup time. Either way, to most people who read the announcement of a CLA in the PHP ACLs some time ago and the PDO 2 development proposal recently, this is a clear indication that the upcoming PDO version won't be open source. Because open means open and the PHP community in particular has always been especially open. Even though, as we recently discussed again, we might have a reason to slow down traffic on internals@, in general we all profited from our openness.

From my very own perspective, I do not see any reason to change the ways in which we are dealing with things. That includes, first of all, that we discuss things openly. And second of all, that we have everything that is in PHP core under the PHP License - apart from bundled libraries, including the Zend engine and TSRM, of course. We btw discussed some time ago that everything in core in fact should be under the PHP License. And so far we do not have a single exception. Instead, we are continuing to replace parts of PHP that have a different license with our own rewrites/re-implementations. If we were to change the way PHP core components are developed or licensed, we would not only scare people away, but would also run the risk of this getting completely out of control.

But when we do not change anything, we do not make any progress. So let's all rethink that.

So we need a better PDO core and better PDO drivers. And that means we need to come up with a better callback infrastructure between main PDO and its various drivers. And that requires some insight in the actual databases, where there are two problems. First, some vendors would only be willing to give us PHP developers insight if we or our companies signed a NDA. And second, the vendors do not usually talk about their internals unless they absolutely have to. And if they do, then this traditionally would be done under a NDA as well. But open source development and NDAs do not really mix. So the NDA way is out.

Now something between completely open and completely closed is (and the Apache Software Foundation does this with quite some success) to use CLAs.

Since I am absolutely against any change of PHP core development because any change might spread out to larger parts of PHP development, let's only deal with PDO here.

That said, PDO main belongs in PHP core, which means that it has to be done under the PHP License which is pretty much incompatible with a CLA. But we can still develop PDO drivers in PECL. And there we can even allow different licenses, at least as long as they are compatible to our OSI approved license. Actually, we already have PECL extensions where people can only contribute after agreeing to some special terms.

At this point we could live happily ever after - if only there weren't the issue of developing a high-performing callback infrastructure. Oh, and we still would need to find people to work on PDO main.

So how do we come up with working specs and people who can contribute?

Right now, we have people contributing to PHP on a regular basis from companies like Google, IBM, MySQL, Oracle, Yahoo, Zend and a bunch of various others - be it large companies, database companies for the PDO matters, established open source companies, or small private companies to freelancers like you and I once were.

Clearly companies can find ways to work on open source without CLAs. And if any company has a problem discussing the protocol of callbacks without having everyone else first sign a CLA, then I can only say that it is their very own problem and potential market disadvantage. Pretty polemic answer, sure. But PHP has gained a lot of momentum in the previous few years and we, the PHP contributors, have accomplished that with a hell lot of effort. Private efforts for the most (and some paid efforts as well). Each and every one of us. So I do not feel the slightest temptation whatsoever, to give even the tiniest piece to any closed company. Plus having to sign a CLA might not be possible to all people working on PDO so far. And with that in mind, I would rather live with having an imperfect callback infrastructure in PDO than losing a list of respected open source contributors.

Sorry to say this, but I do not want a CLA in any part of PHP core.

That of course means that we still have to talk to database vendors. And, guess what, we probably welcome any kind of contribution. Just as we have always gladly accepted any kind of contribution. And maybe the actual problem is starting up a discourse with the vendors. Maybe the problem here is that there is currently no PHP entity. The only thing close to a PHP entity is the so-called PHP Group. But other than having a mail address that goes to some people mentioned on the credits page, the PHP Group does not appear to be doing much of anything. So maybe what we really need to do is fix this situation and recreate the PHP Group. Restart it with people that actually work on PHP and know the internals. Maybe just like PEAR Group by voting; maybe like the Apache Software Foundation; maybe in a completely different way.

Parting words: If you are wondering what PDO 2 is, well so am I. And how is this open source development?

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MultipleIterator for PHP

noreply@blogger.com (helly) — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 20:21:00 +0000

Quite some time ago, there was the idea of a DualIterator for PHP's SPL extension.

But right after providing it, I had to learn that allowing two sub Iterators only is too limiting. So when I got asked by Johannes what open TODOs I have left for upcoming PHP 5.3, I thought of it again. He even offered me a PHP implementation of his own. And he did not hesitate to tell me that he would rather see it use SplObjectStorage to store sub Iterators, rather than the Array he used. As he also allowed associative information to be stored along with sub Iterators, I sat down today to add this feature in SplObjectStorage. Having added that, I came up with the below implementation. Now, if anyone is interested, then please help in testing this out. If you do so, please put your tests in phpt format and send me your tests.


<?php
/** @file appenditerator.inc
 * @ingroup SPL
 * @brief class MultipleIterator
 * @author  Johannes Schlueter
 * @author  Marcus Boerger
 * @date    2003 - 2008
 *
 * SPL - Standard PHP Library
 */

/** @ingroup SPL
 * @brief   Iterator that iterates over several iterators one after the other
 * @author  Johannes Schlueter
 * @author  Marcus Boerger
 * @version 1.0
 * @since PHP 5.3
 */
class MultipleIterator implements Iterator {
    /** Inner Iterators */
    private $iterators;

    /** Flags: const MIT_* */
    private $flags;

    /** do not require all sub iterators to be valid in iteration */
    const MIT_NEED_ANY = 0;

    /** require all sub iterators to be valid in iteration */
    const MIT_NEED_ALL  = 1;

    /** keys are created from sub iterators position */
    const MIT_KEYS_NUMERIC  = 0;

    /** keys are created from sub iterators associated infromation */
    const MIT_KEYS_ASSOC  = 2;

    /** Construct a new empty MultipleIterator
     * @param flags MIT_* flags
     */
    public function __construct($flags = self::MIT_NEED_ALL|self::MIT_KEYS_NUMERIC)
    {
        $this->iterators = new SplObjectStorage();
        $this->flags = $flags;
    }

    /** @return current flags MIT_* */
    public function getFlags()
    {
        return $this->flags;
    }

    /** @param $flags new flags. */
    public function setFlags($flags)
    {
        $this->flags = $flags;
    }

    /** @param $iter new Iterator to attach.
     * @param $inf associative info forIteraotr, must be NULL, integer or string
     *
     * @throws IllegalValueException if a inf is none of NULL, integer or string
     * @throws IllegalValueException if a inf is already an associated info
     */
    public function attachIterator(Iterator $iter, $inf = NULL)
    {
        
        if (!is_null($inf))
        {
            if (!is_int($inf) && !is_string($inf))
            {
                throw new IllegalValueException('Inf must be NULL, integer or string');
            }
            foreach($this->iterators as $iter)
            {
                if ($inf == $this->iterators->getInfo())
                {
                    throw new IllegalValueException('Key duplication error');
                }
            }
        }
        $this->iterators->attach($iter, $inf);
    }

    /** @param $iter attached Iterator that should be detached. */
    public function detachIterator(Iterator $iter)
    {
        $this->iterators->detach($iter);
    }

    /** @param $iter Iterator to check
    * @return whether $iter is attached or not
    */
    public function containsIterator(Iterator $iter)
    {
        return $this->iterator->contains($iter);
    }

    /** @return number of attached Iterator instances. */
    public function countIterators()
    {
        return $this->iterators->count();
    }

    /** Rewind all attached Iterator instances. */
    public function rewind()
    {
        foreach($this->iterators as $iter)
        {
            $iter->rewind();
        }
    }

    /**
    * @return whether all or one sub iterator is valid depending on flags.
    * In mode MIT_NEED_ALL we expect all sub iterators to be valid and
    * return flase on the first non valid one. If that flag is not set we
    * return true on the first valid sub iterator found. If no Iterator
    * is attached, we always return false.
    */
    public function valid()
    {
        if (!sizeof($this->iterators)) {
            return false;
        }
        // The following code is an optimized version that executes as few
        // valid() calls as necessary and that only checks the flags once.
        $expect = $this->flags & self::MIT_NEED_ALL ? true : false;
        foreach($this->iterators as $iter)
        {
            if ($expect != $iter->valid())
            {
                return !$expect;
            }
        }
        return $expect;
    }

    /** Move all attached Iterator instances forward. That is invoke
    * their next() method regardless of their state.
    */
    public function next()
    {
        foreach($this->iterators as $iter)
        {
            $iter->next();
        }
    }

    /** @return false if no sub Iterator is attached and an array of
    * all registered Iterator instances current() result.
    * @throws RuntimeException      if mode MIT_NEED_ALL is set and at least one
    *                               attached Iterator is not valid().
    * @throws IllegalValueException if a key is NULL and MIT_KEYS_ASSOC is set.
    */
    public function current()
    {
        if (!sizeof($this->iterators))
        {
            return false;
        }
        $retval = array();
        foreach($this->iterators as $iter)
        {
            if ($it->valid())
            {
                if ($this->flags & self::MIT_KEYS_ASSOC)
                {
                    $key = $this->iterators->getInfo();
                    if (is_null($key))
                    {
                        throw new IllegalValueException('Sub-Iterator is associated with NULL');
                    }
                    $retval[$key] = $iter->current();
                }
                else
                {
                    $retval[] = $iter->current();
                }
            }
            else if ($this->flags & self::MIT_NEED_ALL)
            {
                throw new RuntimeException('Called current() with non valid sub iterator');
            }
            else
            {
                $retval[] = NULL;
            }
        }
        return $retval;
    }

    /** @return false if no sub Iterator is attached and an array of
    * all registered Iterator instances key() result.
    * @throws LogicException if mode MIT_NEED_ALL is set and at least one
    *         attached Iterator is not valid().
    */
    public function key()
    {
        if (!sizeof($this->iterators))
        {
            return false;
        }
        $retval = array();
        foreach($this->iterators as $iter)
        {
            if ($it->valid())
            {
                $retval[] = $iter->key();
            }
            else if ($this->flags & self::MIT_NEED_ALL)
            {
                throw new LogicException('Called key() with non valid sub iterator');
            }
            else
            {
                $retval[] = NULL;
            }
        }
        return $retval;
    }
}

Blogged with Flock

Flow to be renamed Flaw?

noreply@blogger.com (helly) — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 11:44:00 +0000

After moving to Switzerland, I decided it is time to replace the more than 10-year-old soft snowboard, bindings, and boots set with something new. Even though my brother and I never had any issues whatsoever, the stuff simply got old and worn out. Having spent the weekend before at the 2007 Vancouver PHP conference at Whistler Mountain, where I had an awesome board, I had quite an idea of what I wanted. So I asked friends for a good boarder shop and ended up in the Snowboard Garage. They really had a clue of what they were selling and happened to not only be a Flow dealer, but also have one last Ride Timeless board. Last but not least, I bought pretty damn good Salomon Malamute boots. So Caitlin and I went happily snowboarding. But after 2.5 days my brand new Flow NXT FS bindings got broken already.

Very disappointed, I looked up the designs of the current Flow bindings and found out that they are either cheap plastic crap or have the same design flaw. That is, the high-back consists of three parts. An outer plastic part that holds the closing device. A middle part that is made of aluminum and is connected to the base plate - but to save material is not made high enough. Actually it is just high enough to offer space for two holes through which two screws connect all three parts. Then the inner part is the actual high-back that supports the boot.

Now obviously on the first time I required some support from the bindings (by taking a free ride slope) the whole construction just broke. What happened was that the nut holding the screw just got torn apart. WOW, even I who only spent one semester in mechanical design know this basic rule: the nut must be stronger than the screw. Because one can replace a screw but not the nut. Actually, what the hell, this happened on the third day and I was still carefully driving so to adjust myself to the new equipment? And it is not cheap stuff at all!

O.k., back to the shop and discussing options. Well as said, I looked up the designs and it turns out only the Flow Team binding is able to give some support without having that design flaw. So I had to pay the difference which actually meant that I had to pay the same amount I spent for the other crap in the first place (hey, Flow, I have to work for money, you know?).

After one week, the new bindings finally arrived and we went again, just to notice the next design flaw: the metal strap that connects the high-back is not fully covered by plastic, so it scratches against the plastic strap that holds the boots on the top. WOW! So this binding will eventually last for a year. Idiots. So I just call you Flaw now - and of course no longer suggest your crap to anyone!

Unfortunately there is nothing that can replace a Flaw binding, so I guess I simply
stay with the crap. Why can't the bindings be as they used to be. Just have an awesome quality like the Ride board, the Salomon boots or the also brand new kjus jacket.