Drupal 6.15 vs. PHP 5.3.0
I have spent much of the past 2 months tracking, hacking, and finding workarounds for literally dozens of contributed modules which are not compatible with PHP5.3.0 (or PHP5.3.1), because a client has a Mac OS X Snow Leopard 5.6.x server (over which I do not have control) which is bundled with PHP 5.3.0, which like PHP5.3.1 is known to have bugs such as:
Bug #50394 Reference argument converted to value in __call
So even through Drupal 6.15 core is supposed to be PHP5.3.0 compliant, a whole range of contributed modules are not, and while workarounds and patches have been offered for some contributed modules, I have a long list of contributed modules that spew forth errors too numerous to be listed (or cared about anymore). It is beyond a headache.
Apple has as far as I can tell not yet bundled a PHP5.3.2 which would fix these multiple problems, and my client has not compiled PHP5.3.2 on their Snow Leopard server.
I have reviewed the Drupal 6.16 change list, and I have not seen there anything pertinent to addressing these known problems in Drupal core vs PHP5.3.0 and PHP5.3.1, against which then contributed modules fail, especially when using theme hooks and similar.
I would be very grateful for any feedback from core Drupal developers on whether these problems are known to them and whether anything is planned regarding them (or whether one is expected to skip PHP5.3.0 and PHP5.3.1 on servers and use PHP5.3.2, which option is not available to me).
Comments
Some examples of problems with contributed modules vs. PHP5.3.0
This should be sufficient to warrant intervention be core Drupal developers:
#776156: Core statistics module 6.15 vs. PHP5.3.0: multiple warnings: bootstrap.inc on line 741, bootstrap.inc on line 774
#613528: PHP 5.3 issue - Attempt to modify property of non-object (Calendar Module)
#549884: PHP 5.3 issue - Attempt to modify property of non-object (Date module)
#772894: Link Node fails completely vs PHP Version 5.3.0
#701996: statistics_counter with array title incorrectly passed (eventually) to drupal_validate_utf8($text) in bootstrap.inc 777
#580036: call_user_func_array() First argument is expected to be a valid callback : theme.inc on line 617
How diagnose: warning: preg_match() expects parameter 2 to be string, array given in .../includes/bootstrap/inc 777
And here are some more not yet tracked here on Drupal.org by me:
And the list could go on and on and on for any site with many contributed modules, vs PHP5.3.0 and/or PHP5.3.1. It is a massive, and very stress creating, and very expensive and time-consuming (to me and/or my client) problem, and it no doubt has and is still affecting many other Drupal consultant and their clients.
Could somebody authoritative on behalf of the Drupal development effort please now offer some sort of position statement or plans for Drupal vs. (broken) PHP5.3.0 and PHP5.3.1. If there is such a statement somewhere, please refer me and other Drupal consultants to it. If action has been taken and a future release of Drupal core will address is, please refer me to it, so I and my client can make a decision whether to pursue PHP5.3.2 compilation on Mac OS X Snow Leopard, or await a Drupal upgrade that addresses it, rather than wasting more time chasing workarounds for problems caused by PHP.
Until a solution is offered there should _please_ be a big fat warning on the front Drupal.org page to inform Drupal consultants and their clients to NOT use servers with PHP5.3.0 and PHP5.3.1, which warning need not reflect poorly on the Drupal core or comtributed modules effort.
Silence, or lack of action regarding this, however, does.
Dr Darren Kelly (Webel IT Australia)
PS: I am not empowered to run the given site on another PHP version on another server.
Webel IT Australia, "Elements of the Web", Scientific IT Consultancy,
For PHP-driven Drupal CMS web sites, Enterprise Java, graphical UML, UML Parsing Analysis, SysML, XML.
I can confirm many of these
I can confirm many of these problems on PHP 5.3.2 for Linux (a Rackspace instance of Ubuntu 10.04; specifically 5.3.2-1ubuntu4).
In my case, an instance built on Ubuntu 9.10 with PHP 5.2.10 (5.2.10-2ubuntu6.4) is sill the most error-free.
PS you may be interested in
PS you may be interested in this thread:
http://drupal.org/node/348448
Lastly, try MAMP, which comes
Lastly, try MAMP, which comes with both PHP 5.2 and PHP 5.3. That will help you bypass Snow Leopard's version. MAMP is a reliable tool for local development and testing. (I have not had the same good experience with XAMPP.)
http://mamp.info
subscribing. i'd also like
subscribing. i'd also like clear info for dealing with these 5.3 incompatibilities.