Lower Zend Framework dependency

[robocoder]

Motivation:

• Piwik currently uses a subset of ZF. ZF has evolved from a library of loosely coupled modules to a framework with increasing interdependencies that makes it risky to include only a subset of the ZF files.
• ZF has an increasingly larger footprint.
• ZF 2.0 (coming in 2010) will require a minimum php 5.3.x version.
• Zend_Session has been problematic; see also Zend_Session_Namespace and ZF-1743
  • see also point SitesManager plugins: added group managment to admin UI #4 of http://framework.zend.com/wiki/display/ZFDEV2/Zend_Session+2.0 re: php 5.2.0 incompatibility

These are the ZF classes that Piwik currently uses:

• Zend_Auth_Result
• Zend_Config and Zend_Config_Ini
• Zend_Registry
• Zend_Db ...
• Zend_Feed ...
• Zend_Loader
• Zend_Log ...
• Zend_Mail ...
• Zend_Registry
• Zend_Session and Zend_Session_Namespace

[mattab]

we used ZF from the start as it is a high quality php framework that saves us time and also introduces general maintainability. Moving away from ZF is not desired at this point. When libraries we use require libraries that most Piwik users could not install, we should consider on a component basis if we want to keep using them or look for an alternative. When ZF require 5.3, we can reassess as this might indeed be an issue.

I vote for closing the ticket for now. thoughts?

[robocoder]

Ok.

One final note is that the ZF team is not growing/scaling up to tackle the increase in open issues against ZF.

• http://zendframework.com/issues/secure/Dashboard.jspa#Created-vs-Resolved-Chart/13978

[mattab]

That's interesting. I expect many of these are feature requests or other tickets, rather than bugs, but I might be wrong. I do hope that, ZF being used in many major websites and software these days, their release schedule and QA is up to the expectations.

[robocoder]

In [1882], refs #1035 - address php 5.2.0 issues

Note: in current ZF (1.x series), the minimum supported php version is 5.2.4.

[robocoder]

The alternative is to raise Piwik's minimum PHP requirement.

ZF has hosted 5 debugging sprints ("bug hunting days") over the last 6 months, but looking at the chart in comment:3, the gap between created & resolved tickets continues to widen (i.e., number of open tickets is increasing).

[mattab]

It would be risky for us to increase Piwik php requirements just to match ZF requirements (we currently require 5.1.3). ZF can easily increase their requirements as their user base is a strong tech base that have control over their hosting environments.

At the same time I understand the frustration and risk of manually patching ZF after each update. thx for posting the code to find the buggy lines, funny stuff