[Typo3-dev] extensions with binaries

[Jens Ellerbrock]

Hi Martin				

> > but I don't understand why having stable/dev branches would be
> > a prerequisite for binaries on TER.
>
> They are not really necessary, but I'd reckon it's more important to
> have branches on TER than binary packages.

The TER wouldn't need to change, it allready supports binary files, the question is: do we want to have  binary os-specific extensions.

>> At least htmldoc and ImageMagick have been labelled stable and not
>> really changed much within the last year.
> 
> I'm not talking about ImageMagick anf htmldoc but about our very own
> extensions. If I declare something stable i cannot make big changes. At
> least I would like to have the new version at beta for some while - bit
> still want to feature the older stable version.

I totally agree with that, having stable / dev branches on TER would be a really good thing.

>> I also don't undestand why this should be harder to maintain than
>> a php-based source release.
>
> Because I think you will have to have some different php files to
> accompany the binaries. So pathes etc work allright on differnet
> platforms. But perhaps this is no necessary.

That should not be so complicated. There a different posibillities (examples tailored for htmldoc/ImageMagick):
1. very simple: only put the binaries in the release as a simple means of distributing them, have the user edit the config that holds the path to it.
2. simple but ugly: deliver the binary together with the extension that needs it -> no problem here, the extension knows it own paths
3. advanced: On installing the binary extension it configures either the setting directly or adds a variable to localconf.php that get's evaluated in the extension that uses the binary.

3 should not be that hard to implement and would - for example - allow the user of a shared-hosting server to install imageMagick 4.2.9 with a few clicks of the mouse (as long as he knows what kind of server the hosting runs on).

- Jens Ellerbrock (jense)

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