[dev] proposal: HUOS

[Anil Madhavapeddy]

Quoting Chuck Hagenbuch <chuck@horde.org>:
> 
> Okay - if we do go ahead with this part, I'd definitely like to have your
> input on it, then, since you have experience with it. Can you be more 
> specific about the things that should have been trivial? I'm curious 
> how much of it is solved in php4...
> 

I had a chat with a colleague that did the vast majority of the work,
to refresh my memory.  The major problem was that you couldn't _assign_
classes by reference in PHP3, and only pass by reference.  This made
the construction of trees pretty difficult using an object-oriented
way.  The idea of sticking classes into the database actually died 
pretty early on, and a generic database schema (kind of like our
current preferences one) was decided on instead, and objects serialized
into it.

I think after much hacking, the only efficient way to do things 
in PHP3 ended up by defining a massive global hash array, and referencing
id's into that from everywhere.  It was a bit of an architecture
disaster :-)

It seems like the reference problem is gone in PHP4, but our project
is long dead, so I haven't really had occasion to test it out 
in earnest.

I'm not entirely sure how you are thinking of storing classes
in the database - do you mean the actual code, which is pulled out and
exec'ed ?

--
Anil Madhavapeddy, <anil@recoil.org>