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PHP 4.3.6 Released

Posted by michael on from the hyped-up-on-php dept.

ehmdjii writes "The PHP Development Team is proud to announce the release of PHP 4.3.6. This is is a bug fix release whose primary goal is to address two bugs which may result in crashes in PHP builds with thread-safety enabled. All users of PHP in a threaded environment (Windows) are strongly encouraged to upgrade to this release. All in all this release fixes approximately 25 bugs that have been discovered since the 4.3.5 release. For a full list of changes in PHP 4.3.6, see the ChangeLog."

34 comments

  1. Fellow slashdotters, I need karma by I+Hate+Jesus · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Please mod this up.

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    Do you hate Jesus too?
  2. What irritates me... by Anonytroll · · Score: 1, Interesting

    ... I know I have read somewhere about some rather nasty bugs that are still not fixed in this version.
    Anyone know anything more about this?

    1. Re:What irritates me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, you pulled an "interesting" out of some poor bastard. Nicely done.

    2. Re:What irritates me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I know I have read somewhere about some rather gay trolls that are still not shot in the mouth. Anyone happen to have a shotgun?

  3. Compile 64bit? by Rtsbasic · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Does this mean PHP will compile as 64bit code now?
    "Fixed bug #27717 (Test Failures when compiled on 64-bit mode)"

    1. Re:Compile 64bit? by JoScherl · · Score: 1

      Compiling PHP on a 64bit platform worked since some times. As you can see at bug #27717 make test, after compiling failed at some tests, which work now. I know some 64bit isntallations even though I haven't such a machine myself....

  4. Threaded environment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's not just Windows that can be threaded environments, FreeBSD and Linux also have the option of using the per-child MPM.

    1. Re:Threaded environment by Electrum · · Score: 2, Interesting

      FreeBSD and Linux also have the option of using the per-child MPM

      According to the Apache docs, perchild MPM does not work. Using FastCGI PHP will likely have much better results. PHP has always had problems with thread safety.

    2. Re:Threaded environment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You mean UNIX has always had problems with thread safety. It's not really PHP that is the issue here, it is the large number of libraries that can be compiled into PHP. For example, the very common gdbm library is not threadsafe. And for the longest time the PostgreSQL client library was "mostly" threadsafe except if you happened to use crypt() in a query. Or how about the c-client library? Blaming PHP for not solving problems in 3rd-party libraries is not really fair. A generic PHP script that doesn't touch any troublesome third-party libraries will run just fine in a threaded environment.

    3. Re:Threaded environment by Electrum · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Blaming PHP for not solving problems in 3rd-party libraries is not really fair.

      You are correct that PHP's thread safety issues (most likely) lie with third party libraries. However, PHP could fix most of the problems by using mutexes around the unsafe library calls.

  5. Re:NO MORE PHP! by yelvington · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If anyone is forcing you to entangle content, presentation and business logic, dial 911.

    Try some self-discipline. It's not the language's fault.

  6. Fixes for Apache 2.0? by msuzio · · Score: 1

    So does this mean Apache 2.0 will now play nicer with PHP?

    --
    It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
    1. Re:Fixes for Apache 2.0? by Fweeky · · Score: 1

      To those struggling, just use FastCGI; it'll perform just as well if not better, it'll easily halve the size of your httpd's, and it neatly circumvents any collisions with your favourite MPM.

    2. Re:Fixes for Apache 2.0? by tcopeland · · Score: 1

      We've been using mod_php (PHP 4.3.4) and Apache 2 on SemWebCentral for a while now with no problems...

      * fingers crossed *

      --
      The Army reading list
    3. Re:Fixes for Apache 2.0? by KingOfBLASH · · Score: 1

      What problems are you experiencing with PHP under Apache 2.0? I've been using the two together successfully with no problems on several non-production boxes, and haven't seen any problems which would lead me to believe that I shouldn't use them on production boxen. Are the issues with apache 2.0 and php relatively isolated?

  7. Slow day... by Crayon+Kid · · Score: 0

    ...no?

    --
    i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
  8. Re:NO MORE PHP! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Sorry, but that's what PHP is for.

    If you're not entangling your content, presentation and logic with PHP, then you're wasting time and should have chosen something better :)

  9. thread bugs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Oh please, PHP can't handle threads properly. Yet another reason to switch to Per-- oh wait, threads? Nevermind.

    1. Re:thread bugs by dash2 · · Score: 1

      Serious question: are there any open source scripting languages that _can_ handle threads?

    2. Re:thread bugs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Perl.

    3. Re:thread bugs by Electrum · · Score: 1

      Serious question: are there any open source scripting languages that _can_ handle threads?

      Python has full thread support.

    4. Re:thread bugs by JoScherl · · Score: 1

      Serious question: are there any open source scripting languages that _can_ handle threads?

      PHP itself is completly thread safe, but as soon as you link it to a library, that is not threadsafe PHP isn't thread safe anymore and usually you link PHP against many libs (glibc, gd, libxml2, mysql, ldap, ...) and some of them aren't thread safe. Just configure PHP with something like

      ./configure --disable-all --with-apache2
      and you've got an threadsafe PHP build for Apache2 - but using this isn't any fun since most things from external extensions is missing.
  10. Re:NO MORE PHP! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    PHP is also fast and easy and template systems like Smarty are trivial to setup and use. I'd rather have one server running PHP than need a rack of machines running Java to do the same job.

  11. Re:NO MORE PHP! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    PHP's not exactly a stunner when it comes to performance, especially when comparing with a well written Java application on a good JVM.

  12. Re:NO MORE PHP! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Have you actually tried running a servlet? Do you know how well they perform, or are you just spouting out rubbish about Java being slow because you used a bad Swing app 3 years ago?

    Oh yeah, Java makes it pretty trivial to cache content too.

  13. Re:NO MORE PHP! by tiptone · · Score: 5, Informative


    don't bother with 911 just download Smarty.

    Try it, it's what makes PHP really nice. PHP without Smarty is almost sure to become an unmaintainable mess, especially if more than one person is working on a project. PHP + Smarty is the perfect seperation of content, presentation, and business logic.

    --
    Please don't read my sig.
  14. Re:NO MORE PHP! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Am I the only one who LIKES to entangle logic and presentation?

    I know that it's not good practice for large projects - but really, a website is not typically a large project.

    If I wanna just throw a quick 'page last updated' in, why NOT do it inline?

  15. PHP 5 by roboros · · Score: 1

    It is nice with another bugfix release, but what I'm really looking forward to is the release of PHP 5 with Zend Engine 2.0. Then the object model will finally be sane (private/protected member variables for example).

    1. Re:PHP 5 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Stop with your fucking cookie-cutter comments you asswad. If I didn't spend my last few modpoints before I saw your piece of shit post you would be modded down.

    2. Re:PHP 5 by JoScherl · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I think you don't really need public/private/protected in a scripting language. More interesting for me are other improvements like that assignments like

      $a = new foo();
      $b =$a;

      are made by reference. With PHP4 even the first line would create a copy of the object. Also interesting arenew extensions like MySLi, the new soap extension or the rewrite of the XML-Extensin based on libxml2 (including the realy nice SimpleXML-Extension) ....

      A collection of PHP5 information can be found p.e. on this German site (most links lead to English pages, and I'm one of the ones running this site - so it's the best (German) PHP site *g*)

  16. Re:NO MORE PHP! by KingOfBLASH · · Score: 1

    Well, the point is that if you entangle logic, there will be some critical point of no return, where your script will stop being maintainable, and you will tear your hair out trying to find the bugs introduced with every change. However, you are right in that for a small web site you could tangle logic with no ill effect. However, you should always be careful about what you are doing -- you'd be amazed at how many quick projects became very large very quickly as management decides to take "just one more thing" on.

  17. Re:NO MORE PHP! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Oh please. PHP doesn't even have database connection pooling, and since there's no "application scope" there's no way to implement it yourself. Besides, if you think PHP is faster than Java, you're deluding yourself (see http://www.caucho.com/articles/benchmark.xtp). Java Servlets wiped the floor with PHP even before runtime-optimizing Hotspot JVM. Now the difference is so large, nobody even bothers trying to compare them.

  18. Re:NO MORE PHP! by nuba · · Score: 1

    if you like it don't listen to people who tell you not to do it!
    either one of two things will happen:
    1) your site will stay small and you'll be able to maintain it and you'll be happy it was so easy and didnt waste the hour of time learning to use a templating system.
    or
    2) your site grows into a huge tangle of mess and it will bite you in the ass and you'll develop a life long fear or anything that remotely approuches the mixing of presentation and logic and content. but at this point you have a large successful site anyways so are happy while redesigning the whole thing :-D meanwhile as you recode the whole site, your content stagnates and you lose all your traffic. :(

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