openFIRST PHP 5 Compatibility

[Timothy D. Ginn]

As many of you know, on July 13th, 2004 PHP 5 was released (not just a beta version) and is available for download from php.net .

openFIRST is not currently 100% compatible with PHP 5. For those attempting to install openFIRST on a PHP 5 system, there are currently three choices:

A) Wait until a PHP 5 compatible version is released (one is currently being worked on)
B) Run a version of PHP 4 for now, and upgrade to PHP 5 later (once a compatible version of openFIRST is released)
C) Install database tables manually by running the queries in setup/setup.mysql of each module, and live with what works, for now.

Among the changes to PHP 5 are some changes that have affected the operation of current code. openFIRST is one of many programs affected by these changes, and we are committed to making openFIRST compatible with PHP 5. It is likely that PHP 5 users will encounter difficulties or incompatibilities in other programs (in addition to openFIRST) while the authors of each program work toward PHP 5 compatibility.