JSON extension should be bundled in php by default

[manfreed]

According to the php documentation* " the JSON extension is bundled and compiled into PHP by default".

If I follow this logic I would expect to have the json functions available just by installing one of the php5 binary package (for example php5-cli), however this is not the case.

Are there any reason to not install theese extensions by default?

See: http://www.php.net/manual/en/json.installation.php

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.10
Package: php5-json 1.3.1+dfsg-1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.10.0-3.12-generic 3.10.1
Uname: Linux 3.10.0-3-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.11-0ubuntu1
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sun Jul 21 01:15:44 2013
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-04-29 (82 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 13.04 "Raring Ringtail" - Release amd64 (20130424)
MarkForUpload: True
SourcePackage: php-json
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to saucy on 2013-06-24 (26 days ago)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Andrew Starr-Bochicchio (andrewsomething)]

This isn't an extension split out of php, it "is a drop-in alternative to PHP standard json extension." So if there is actually a bug, it's in the php package itself not this one. The problem is that the json extension included in php is considered "non-free" software due to a silly clause in its license, so it has been removed in Debian/Ubuntu. You can read the details in this Debian bug: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=692613

[0] http://pecl.php.net/package/jsonc

[Robie Basak (racb)]

The best we can do here is for php5 to depend on php5-json as appropriate, so availability of the JSON module will be automatic. This will be solved by bug 1242726, so I'm marking this as a duplicate of that bug.