PHP 5.3.0 Compatibility

[eluser]Derek Jones[/eluser]
[quote author="shoe-maker" date="1249959608"]my client can't wait for CI 1.7.2[/quote]

I think you might be better to export the latest version from the subversion, as your changes are incomplete. We do our best to keep the development branch stable, and if you're going to run a modified base anyway...

[quote author="coolfactor" date="1249960152"]Two questions:
- why did earlier versions of PHP not require date.timezone to be set?[/quote]

As they added in and improved PHP's date and timezone handling functions, I suppose they didn't want to require millions of hosts to tweak their php.ini files -- there's already reluctance among hosts to upgrade PHP versions until their server distro provider does so.

- why can't PHP just inherit the server's timezone setting as a last resort?

PHP does make an attempt, but you'll notice that the order is: set at runtime, TZ environment variable, date.timezone ini option, host OS query response. I've found at least two common OS's whose query response returns a value that PHP doesn't anticipate, which also generates a warning. Yay?