[Fedora-packaging] PHP packaging policy notes

[Joe Orton]

cc'ing Tim since we had lots of discussion about much of this stuff 
already and I'm not sure if he's on fedora-packaging (I didn't even know 
that list existed...)

I was planning to add a "php-abi = <PHP_API_VERSION>" definition for C 
ABI versioning rather than php(ABI).

Versioning language features in PHP a la MODULE_COMPAT_* is just not 
going to be feasible; the language is not well-defined enough nor stable 
enough for us to try and enforce versioning; plus stuff like 
"zend.ze1_compatibility_mode" means the exposed language is dependent on 
config options anyway.

I don't see why it's necessary for a PEAR package to require 
php-pear(PEAR); that is somewhat equivalent to an RPM having "Requires: 
rpm"; it should be sufficient and correct for PEAR packages to simply 
"Requires: php-pear" AFAICS.

Why should a PEAR package for foo provide php-foo?  Not sure that's a 
good idea.

On "Other Packages": an application written in PHP or such like should 
not have a php- prefix at all.  A Smarty package should be called 
"smarty" (following the "upper-case is evil" rule of packaging).

joe