why is php4.3.3rc2 the latest version in ports?

[Kris Kennaway]

On Fri, Aug 08, 2003 at 10:19:12PM -0500, r-militante at northwestern.edu wrote:

> pdflib version 4.0.1 is also broken in the latest ports tree.

pdflib version 4.x has been withdrawn for download by the authors.
There's nothing we can do about that.

> many pages on our site were rendered useless, generated error messages,
> etc. because of the broken pdflib support in php4.3.3rc2.  i had to find
> a way to downgrade my version of php back to 4.3.1 from 4.3.3rc2 in order 
> to fix it, which resulted in unhappy users for a couple of hours while i
> figured out how to downgrade...
> 
> i should have done my research, i admit, before trying to upgrade.  but - 
> why is 4.3.3rc2 - a *release candidate* the latest version of php in the
> ports tree?

You'd have to ask the maintainer, but at a guess the answer might be
"Because the maintainer decided it was worthwhile, on balance, to
update it" (perhaps the upgrade fixed a lot of other bugs that you
have been lucky enough to avoid).  I understand that this experience
caused you a lot of difficulty, but the lesson you should probably
take away from it is:

* Don't perform blind upgrades on live systems without adequate
  testing and a fall-back plan.

Kris
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