Hi Maurice,
> Is there a roadmap available for bq with php 5 support, perhaps based on
> centos 5?
>
> I know that Brian and Michael have packages for php 5 available and based
> on their excellent work I trust them. But much rather I would like to have
> a system that has native support for php 5.
Yeah, we are working on BlueQuartz 5106R, which is BlueQuartz on CentOS 5 -
CentOS 5.2 was released this week. I'd say we're about 95% done. But like
it's usually the case with any coding project: The last few percent are the
hardest and there progress is the slowest. And just when you think you're
done, someone finds a bug that leaves you wondering what else might be askew.
At the moment there is a list of about a dozen known bugs and issues with
5106R, or things that still need to be done. Also it's not yet fully tested,
so there may be more bugs lurking in the shadows.
We haven't released a roadmap because all that work is done voluntarily on
an "as time permits" basis. I was in the favorite position to pour around 200
hours of work into it during the last six weeks to move things ahead, but
it'll probably take another four weeks until we might release a public beta.
Even when this Beta will be released, we'll likely mark it as "not suitable
for hosting yet" until enough people have had a chance to test it out and go
on an additional hunt for hidden bugs which we may have overlooked.
Also: At the moment the only available migration path is a CMUexport and
CMUimport on a fresh install. Those familliar with CentOS4 -> CentOS5
progressions will know that the recommended procedure is an OS reinstall.
Which - from our perespective - makes a hell of a lot of sense. Despite that
we're working on a procedure that allows upgrades of existing CentOS 4 based
BlueQuartz installs, though. However, this will not be as seamless (or
painless) as a pure YUM based update or upgrade. Also: Third party updates
and additions may cause conflicts during or right after updates. So the more
heavily a system has detoured from a "vanilla" install, the more tricky the
upgrade procedure will get.
The "native" PHP version on BlueQuartz 5106R is PHP-5.1.6 as provided by
CentOS. The current PHP version provided by PHP.net is 5.2.6. Third party
PKGs usually provide a PHP version with more extras than the "native" PHP
found on BlueQuartz. So it may still be worth it to run a third party PHP5 on
BlueQuartz 5106R, but that depends on the expected usage purposes.
Oh, and this should also be mentioned: Pretty much all PKGs need to be rebuild
for BlueQuartz 5106R by the respective vendors. So if you have third party
PKGs that worked on a CentOS4 based BlueQuartz 5102R, they will not work on
5106R, as the architecture is different (different glibc, different version
of Perl, Apache, etc., etc.).
Likewise: Frontpage support will no longer be available in BlueQuartz 5106R.
This is due to license restrictions (Frontpage Server Extensions for Linux
were EOL'ed by Microsoft in 2004!). Also it won't compile against
Apache-2.2.X anymore, so please don't ask how you can "bring it back"
yourself.
If I were optimistic, then I'd tentatively draw up the following roadmap:
Public Beta in four weeks, first official release in two months. But that's
just how I see it - it might be slower or faster. And it also depends on Mr.
Murphy. ;o)
--
With best regards,
Michael Stauber