Comments on: Portability Is A Good Goal http://blog.ericlamb.net/2010/07/portability-is-a-good-thing/ Thoughts on programming, people and life Sat, 04 Feb 2012 09:01:37 -0800 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v= By: Eric Lamb http://blog.ericlamb.net/2010/07/portability-is-a-good-thing/comment-page-1/#comment-6596 Eric Lamb Tue, 27 Jul 2010 17:08:14 +0000 http://blog.ericlamb.net/?p=3115#comment-6596 Hi wbond, It's been my experience that most deployment issues, with your everyday, and generic, WordPress, ExpressionEngine, or similiar, sites comes down to the paths. Rarely are there issues with missing extensions though that's not unheard of (obviously). Missing extensions are just not something that comes up enough to warrant a rant :) Your point about OS and PHP version support, while valid in some cases, are the types of concerns that are burned into a developers mind while working on the project I think. Meaning that, in my opinion, most competent programmers know there are going to be issues moving a site from Windows running IIS 6 with PHP 5.1 and MySQL 4 to Linux with Apache 2.2, PHP 5.3.2 and MySQL 5.1; that's going to be something that requires care and thought. That type of problem isn't insidious or frustrating to me because it's an obvious concern for most of us. It's comparable to attempting an install of Windows 95 software on Windows 7 in my opinion; shit's gonna come up. I don't agree that portability doesn't matter because, as you said, "most application will only ever live on a single, managed server". That hasn't been my experience; in fact the opposite is true. Most sites do move to another environment at one time or another (especially if developed with a dev -> stage -> live paradigm). I am a freelancer and before that I worked at agencies for years so my perspective is definitely skewed though. Thanks for the heads up on Flourish BTW; it looks like an interesting project and a new shiny toy to play with :). Eric Hi wbond,

It’s been my experience that most deployment issues, with your everyday, and generic, WordPress, ExpressionEngine, or similiar, sites comes down to the paths. Rarely are there issues with missing extensions though that’s not unheard of (obviously). Missing extensions are just not something that comes up enough to warrant a rant :)

Your point about OS and PHP version support, while valid in some cases, are the types of concerns that are burned into a developers mind while working on the project I think. Meaning that, in my opinion, most competent programmers know there are going to be issues moving a site from Windows running IIS 6 with PHP 5.1 and MySQL 4 to Linux with Apache 2.2, PHP 5.3.2 and MySQL 5.1; that’s going to be something that requires care and thought. That type of problem isn’t insidious or frustrating to me because it’s an obvious concern for most of us. It’s comparable to attempting an install of Windows 95 software on Windows 7 in my opinion; shit’s gonna come up.

I don’t agree that portability doesn’t matter because, as you said, “most application will only ever live on a single, managed server”. That hasn’t been my experience; in fact the opposite is true. Most sites do move to another environment at one time or another (especially if developed with a dev -> stage -> live paradigm).

I am a freelancer and before that I worked at agencies for years so my perspective is definitely skewed though.

Thanks for the heads up on Flourish BTW; it looks like an interesting project and a new shiny toy to play with :) .

Eric

]]> By: wbond http://blog.ericlamb.net/2010/07/portability-is-a-good-thing/comment-page-1/#comment-6592 wbond Tue, 27 Jul 2010 16:31:20 +0000 http://blog.ericlamb.net/?p=3115#comment-6592 While I agree with the concepts you are outlining here, I was expecting something more extensive when you mentioned portability in the title. With PHP, not only is configuration a big part of portability, but extension availability, server OS and PHP version support. In many cases, such portability doesn't really matter since most application will only ever live on a single, managed server. Such issues do get much more important once you start dealing with open source or commercial applications. They can even be important to freelancers and agencies who need to work on different client environments. I have spent a good amount of time working on such projects, and as part of it I've created a general-purpose PHP library that addresses many issues of portability, including providing native PHP implementations of non-standard extensions, consistent support for all of the major database engines, support for alternates such as GD and ImageMagick. If anyone is interested, you can learn more about Flourish at http://flourishlib.com. While I agree with the concepts you are outlining here, I was expecting something more extensive when you mentioned portability in the title. With PHP, not only is configuration a big part of portability, but extension availability, server OS and PHP version support.

In many cases, such portability doesn’t really matter since most application will only ever live on a single, managed server. Such issues do get much more important once you start dealing with open source or commercial applications. They can even be important to freelancers and agencies who need to work on different client environments.

I have spent a good amount of time working on such projects, and as part of it I’ve created a general-purpose PHP library that addresses many issues of portability, including providing native PHP implementations of non-standard extensions, consistent support for all of the major database engines, support for alternates such as GD and ImageMagick. If anyone is interested, you can learn more about Flourish at http://flourishlib.com.

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