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Question: What are requirements for having (new/old) functions within PHP core? :)

php.internals

Thomas Krüger

4 years ago
Dear internal developers of PHP, I got a question after viewing the PHP sources for the core functions (ext folder) about the internal PHP functions written in C. On the one hand I have these core functions like soundex() or levenshtein() which seems to be part of PHP core and on the other hand I have the PECL packages for math, statistics and so on, which are not part of the PHP core. My question: What is the requirements for having something within the core of PHP and something else outside in PECL? Would it not an idea to exclude everything outside of PHP, maybe for performance or security reasons (suhosin/snuffleupagus) and only include, what is needed for the current project? Or if it has nothing to do with performance, why not including everything from PECL into PHP core, so PHP could offer out-of-the-box more and more features for developers? Best regards, stay healthy and thanks for your efforts and work on PHP! :) Thomas PHP / C programmer

Mark Randall

4 years ago
On 07/03/2022 12:56, Thomas Krüger wrote:
> Or if it has nothing to do with performance, why not including > everything from PECL into PHP core, so PHP could offer out-of-the-box > more and more features for developers?
PECL packages get to maintain their own release schedule, unlike PHP which follows a fixed cycle. PECL packages have their own permissions, unlike PHP which only allows a narrow group to merge code into it. The PHP core team does not have the knowledge or time to maintain every PECL package, or even a large number of them. Things distributed in Core should be produced and tested to the same standard as the engine itself. Certain PECL packages conflict such as if they were forked.