Comment 38 for bug 87063

Strange attitude, Ondřej. We're all just trying to make the product better so let's work together and be civil to each other.

Please let me know if any of the following facts are incorrect - it may be that me (and others) are misunderstanding. PHP's mssql and sybase libraries are different. As an example, the sybase one is supported by PDO (pdo_dblib); but, unlike the mssql one, does not have transaction support. So, some users of ubuntu would like to use the mssql library provided by PHP (available by compiling with --with-mssql) instead of (or as well as) the sybase support (available by compiling with --with-sybase/--with-pdo-dblib). This would allow them to use something other than PDO and have transaction support in their connections to MSSQL databases, for example. (I know both libaries use freetds underneath - but the interfaces are not the same and the functionality available is not the same.)

Because of these differences, I am just one among many others (including those who have commented on this ticket), who have had to build PHP from source (--with-mssql=shared) in order to get the mssql.so library that we want.

So, given that PHP provides and supports this library in it's own distributions, and given that there is clearly a userbase who wished to use this library (as opposed to - or as well as - the one provided by php5-sybase) - and given that the work involved in generating the necessary php5-mssql package would be negligible, can we not please agree that this would be a sensible step forward to keep the community happy and improve Ubuntu's offering.

(All of the above applies to Intrepid as well as Hardy and earlier releases.)
(There is, of course, a php5-mssql package already - but this is just a virtual package provided by php5-sybase.)