The point is that, for instance, PHP 5.3 was not a trivial upgrade
for coders or hosters. Sure it's mostly compatible, and you certainly
can write code that works from 5.0->5.3 just fine, and if not then
you're probably doing something wrong... but that's most of the PHP
code out there right now. :-) And naturally you can't test your code
against 5.3 until it's out.
Larry, to mitigate this issue, please refer to the exhaustive list of
instructions here:
http://twitter.com/nateabele/status/10733251789
PLEASE NOTE: This also applies to user-land applications with test
suites (and here I'm risking showing my ignorance by blindly assuming
Drupal does, in fact, have a test suite).
Please see
http://snaps.php.net/ and
http://qa.php.net/ for more
information.
Thanks,
- Nate
Drupal 7 has an extensive test suite, using our own testing framework
rather than phpt. (Let's not get into a debate about why that's the
case; it's neither here nor there nor would I even be on just one side
of it. <g>)
But that's for a high-end project. It doesn't really help the code
slingers that happen to have code they threw together that is holding
back a hosting company who don't even know what "make" is.
I am not saying people shouldn't be testing code. I'm saying the barrier
to entry to testing common code found in the wild on a new release of
PHP is higher than you seem to be assuming.
--Larry Garfield