As much as it would be nice, people aren't likely to upgrade to PHP 5.4 or higher on the basis of this add-on alone. And a big portion of that 50+% is probably down to crap shared hosts being lazy, or a requirement to maintain backwards compatibility with other essential applications. It really isn't fair to start leaving them behind over the syntactical difference between [] and array().
I just wanted to say that I fully understood on release that the only difference is trivial. I didn't release it unsure why it wasn't working with 5.3, it is that way on purpose.
I don't expect people to upgrade to PHP 5.4 "on the basis of this add-on alone," but because there's great reason to be on 5.4+ even without it. There's no good excuse for being on an older version. You can (and should) run multiple versions of PHP on the same server if you need to support legacy applications.
If you're running a crap shared host I can't imagine why you'd be concerned over the performance to the degree this addon emphasizes. And if you really are, vote with your dollar and move to a better host. Any host worth your money supports 5.4.
All of that said, I do realize the real-world implication is this will exclude bunches of people from being able to use this addon. And people aren't going to read the above and do an about-face and move hosts.. it's optimistic at best. I just think people giving money to hosts that can't be bothered to properly support PHP is part of the problem and offering 5.3 compatibility is no solution to the underlying issue.
In the interests of not being a jerk, I will release a single version that is 5.3 compatible. It won't be supported, it won't receive updates (just like PHP 5.3
), and it won't be in the main download, you'll have to grab it from the FAQ.
@Chris D thanks for the pull request I'll see to it that a 5.3 version is available.. and the above isn't directly solely at you, I'm just explaining my reasoning and venting my frustrations.
Do i need this, when i have the Cache Addon from xfrocks installed?
Probably. Check GWTMetrix.