Posted by JM on 03/11/07 12:13

J.O. Aho wrote:
> JM wrote:
>> I installed a webserver based on scientific linux 4.4 yesterday (not my
>> idea, but my bosses) and after doing all updates (apt-get and yum) the
>> version of PHP was 4.3.9. Current version (at least for PHP4) is 4.4.6.
>> 4.3.9 is 2.5 years old.
>> Scientific linux is based Red Hat Enterprise Linux so I took a look
>> there: same thing, but it mentioned that bugfixes were backported.
>> What exactly does this mean ? Does it mean that all/some of the changes
>> (bugfixes, ...) since the appearance of version 4.3.9 are applied to
>> your installation but that the version number of your server doesn't
>> change. Is there any means to know how up to date you version of php is
>> ? Does my 'backported' 4.3.9 equals version 4.4.6 of 4.4.4 or ...
>
>
> There happens there is a bug that has been in for a long time, moved
> with each update before been found in the recent version, as the around
> code changes, it's not sure the patch that you apply to 4.4.5 to fix the
> bug will work on 4.3.9, so you have to fix the patch so it applies to
> 4.3.9, this is the backport. With a backport you only affect the bug
> itself, you don't patch it up to 4.4.6, so your PHP is still 4.3.9, but
> isn't affected by the bugs that the backported patch fixed.
>
> It's possible to backport features too, that happens more often in the
> kernel, specially features from the 2.6 kernels to the 2.4 kernels.
>


I am waiting for scientific linux to come out, which will have PHP5.1.
Suppose all bugfixes will be backported. And I want to use a feature
thta requires PHP 5.2. Is that possible or do they only backport
bugfixes and no added features ?

Pugi!

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