Technical insights and software architecture

Deep dives into PHP development, Horde Framework evolution and practical software engineering. Focused on real-world solutions for complex technical challenges. “Always close to the source”.

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PHP, Horde Framework, authentication systems, composer workflows and modern development practices.

Long-form Analysis

Comprehensive technical articles exploring architectural decisions, migration strategies and lessons learned from real projects.

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Open source contributions, framework development and sharing knowledge with the PHP developer community.

Category: Tech

  • Sunsetting the Maintaina Horde Fork

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    A few years back I started a downstream fork of Horde to develop features I needed for foss and customer deployments without upstream dependencies. It went successful, was a great learning opportunity and a good exercise in critiquing our old tool chain and approaches. We had some well-known downstream users and contributors but I’d say…

  • PHP: The case for standalone null parameters

    PHP 8.0 introduced null and false as members of union types but disallowed them as standalone parameter types. PHP 8.2 changed that and allowed null as standalone parameter types. What is this good for? Should they extend this to “never” one day? Why do I call standalone null parameters poor man’s generics? What’s a null parameter?…

  • Stolperfrei: Wir können noch so viel lernen

    Ria Weyprecht befasst sich seit über zwei Jahrzehnten mit Web-Gestaltung und Technik – ob nun mit WordPress, anderen Plattformen, Inhouse-Frameworks oder ganz frei. Mindestens seit der Halbzeit spielt auch Barrierefreiheit zunehmend eine Rolle. Mit großem Interesse lese ich seit einiger Zeit auch ihren deutschsprachigen Blog “stolperfrei.digital”. Dort stellt sie immer wieder Techniken vor, mit denen…

  • A wicked problem from the past

    In the last few evenings there was great despair. Trying to solve one problem would reveal yet another one. As a result, I hesitated to release some of the changes immediately. I don’t want to make people suffer, having to deal with new improved problems of the day whenever they run an update on their…

  • Unit Testing Horde 6

    Some years ago I reasoned about upgrading unit tests from ancient PHPUnit 4 to then-recent PHPUnit 9.Back then Horde’s unit test suite would use a Horde_Test class inheriting from the actual phpunit test cases. Even then I was fairly certain that this approach was not very practical in the long run.Why extending PHPUnit might be…

  • I want to run horde/components on new PHP

    If you want to run horde-components on a version of PHP which is not yet reflected in packagist.org released versions: me@mine:~/horde/components$ composer config minimum-stability devme@mine:~/horde/components$ composer install –ignore-platform-reqs No composer.lock file present. Updating dependencies to latest instead of installing from lock file. See https://getcomposer.org/install for more information.Loading composer repositories with package informationUpdating dependenciesLock file operations:…

  • Runaway Trains Back on Track – Plans are just plans

    Trains don’t only run on railroad tracks but supposedly on schedule. Commuters shall know every stop, arrival and departure, the order of cars and their position on the platform. If trains regularly arrive delayed, at another platform, composed of different or differently ordered cars it is a source of frustration. If they skip a station…

  • Maintaina’s Horde 6 goes upstream

    Horde 6 alpha versions with composer 2 support are coming to the upstream repos and packagist.org composer create-project horde/bundle .

  • Satis is now a Composer Plugin.

    Satis is the lightweight, static repository generator for the composer package manager. It enables admins to provide PHP software packages inside airgapped CIs, OS packaging environments and restricted data centers. Back in August I added a plugin mode to satis to make it work as a regular composer plugin. While working on it, I also…