Hi

In my downloads there is no PHP_DBG for PHP beyond 5.0.x is this an oversight or will 3.3.3 not support versions past 5.0.x

Regards
Neven

Hello Neven,

It's not an oversight. Version 3.3 of PhpED got three update packs and we provided debugger modules to support all php versions released during that time. As far as I remember the latest is php 5.0.4. That's all v3.3 supports. Newer versions of the IDE got necessary changes to support newer php versions and in particular PhpED 4.0 supports debugger v2.18 that subsequently supports php up to version 5.1.2.
Current version of the IDE is 4.5 and debugger version is 2.20. We're planning to release update #1 on March 30th to support php 5.1.3. Neither of the previous versions of the IDE will be updated.
If you're interested in upgrade, please contact customer care dept http://shop.nusphere.com/contact_us/index.php .

Hi

Strangely I don't find this acceptable, Basically you are forcing me to upgrade to 4.5 in order to keep up with the latest release of PHP.
Fundamentally I can see not changes in php 5.1 (The oo introduced with 5 for example) that 'require' changes in the IDE,
I will upgrade if this is required (I have no choice) What actually initiated this is a bug in PHP, PDO rowCount() in MSSQL always returning 0,
and I decided to go thru the pain of a PHP upgrade to the latest stable version (I'm on 5.0.3) to 5.1.2, What it now results in is my going thru the pain and cost of upgrading my IDE because of your policies

Neven

Dear Neven, we understand your point and appreciate the cost and inconvinience of the upgrade. However, I have to say that this is not done to impose the pain on you - we have to keep up with PHP versions and deliver new features to PhpED and dbg. Debugger requires development effort to stay compatible with new PHP releases. As you can guess, there is a very substantial cost that we carry doing this. While we are doing our best to maintain previously released versions, there is a limit to what we can do. We do agree with you, that it is reasonable to expect that one version of PhpED will be maintained to support multiple versions of PHP and we believe that we fully meet these expectations. However, as any other software vendor we need at some point to limit the support of previously released versions in order to provide better features, more functionality in the new releases.
Having said that, we will of course continue supporting released versions of PhpED to and beyond reasonable limits.
I hope it clarifies our position on this subject and I hope we can offer you great value in PhpED 4.5 as well as in future releases. We do appreciate your business. Thank you.

Hi

I understand your position as well but as far as I can see the debugger development for 5.1.X (server side) has already been done and its cost is part of your ongoing development and unless the debugger for 5.1 versus 5.0 required alterations to the IDE client then there is no valid 'developement cost' argument, it is simply that you have forced the obsolescence of 3.3.3, I do upgrades, I just don't appreciate be dictated to and then given an unreasonable explaination.

Neven

Hi Neven, I don't mean to argue with you and fully understand your reasons, however, please note that even if we don't have to do any modifications on the client side we still need to run full regression testing for dbg changes with IDE. That includes all Windows and all Linux servers and UNix and Mac OS. Setting it up is no small task itself and then running through tests. We take quality issue extremely seriously and frankly go crazy testing. That doesn;t mean that we don't have bugs- everybody does, but we are trying our best to have the least amount.
We are also addressing this issue, there are partnerships in final stages of negotiations which I belive will address the problem of time that the testing takes and will bring the quality even higher. It is not out of the realm of possible that we will be able to support more versions in the future, however, at this moment we have to limit it to what it is.
We appreciate your feedback, I hope we can still provide the best possible service to you, believe me when I say this: it is important to us.
While on the subject- I encourage you to take a look at 4.5. I understand the cost issue and am not going to run the sales gimmicks here, but we as a company honestly think that it is worth upgrading, for few reasons:
1. IE toolbar - really cool stuff
2. Multilangauge syntax hihgliter and dynamic hihgliter
3. SQLLite and INterbase support
PLus all the features we put in 4.0

We are not trying to force anybody to upgrade to just extract their money (even though we are "for profit" company:-)) - look at the activity at these Forums, we work 24/7 to make sure that our customers get their money worth. I hope we can provide more value for you too. Thank you.

I have purchased 4.5 upgrade in good faith, I do understand your testing difficulties (they are after all my upgrade difficulties multiplied!)
You could use your community of users to test prior releases, I would have been happy for you to give me the PHP_DBG.DLL for 5.1.x with the proviso that if it didn't work it was unsupported as development of 3.3 had ceased (This is reasonable), I would have happliy tested this for you.
I would however suggest that in future you support future releases of PHP for an IDE capable of it, What for example is the prospect of PHPed 4.5 supporting PHP 6?

Neven

Even though it's possible, I think it's hardly feasible. Say, we got 100 bug reports and what's then? Finding bugs is not the least problem Fixing them would anyway require time and resources.


Well, please contact our support.

Who said they had to be fixed?, your argument was that you were not prepared to release it because it could reflect poorly on the quality of your software, my proposal was to get your existing users (who wanted to, to test this for you) then you could publish if it worked or not or what the limitations are, we as developers understand that sort of logic, ie you may use 3.3.3 with php 5.1.2 but the following issues have been found and will not be fixed as developement of 3.3.3 has ceased, ie I could make an informed choice to upgrade or battle on



Huh? I thought by posting in this forum thats what I had done!

Neven

You didn't want an upgrade before faced up with problems in php-5.0,
we didn't want to change anything in the debugger until faced up with incompatibility between 5.0 and 5.1 which required us to change logic, for example in Call Stack window. Just step in to an object method and you'll how 4.0 (4.5) displays call stack list.


Hmmm it's rather strange then. Why would we run tests at all if not to get list of things to be fixed? If there were no compatibility issues, we would provide renewal for the debugger module without any changes in the IDE and it's exactly what we actually did. See dbg-2.16.20 version in your list of downloads. It's just an update to the debugger that did not require any changes. We would still continue this for 3.3 if it was possible without changes.

Great I understand this, this was not made clear in the start of this thread, if you had stated that this was the reason that 3.3.3 did not support php 5.1.X then i would have understood, thanks

I'm glad to see mutual understandings on both sides.
BTW, I think you would not be disappointed with v4.5,
even though 3.3 were working with 5.1.
Sorry that it went by this way and looked like you
were forced to the upgrade...