space before ";" breaks php.ini parsing

[brainstorm]

The following php.ini snippet is found in the newest releases of php.ini (found un downloads section and Ubuntu 13.10):

; If disabled, all PHPDoc comments are dropped from the code to reduce the
 ;size of the optimized code.
;opcache.save_comments=1

The space before " ;size" breaks automation systems like Ansible which tries to parse it as a correctly formatted .ini file.

Test script:
---------------
Apparently it only breaks with builtin MacOSX Python distribution, so you would not be able to reproduce the above exception if running GNU/Linux or others.

#!/usr/bin/python

import ConfigParser, os

config = ConfigParser.ConfigParser()
config.readfp(open('php.ini'))
print config.get('PHP', 'max_execution_time')

Expected result:
----------------
It should return the value of the attribute instead of raising an exception:

$ python phpparse.py
30

Actual result:
--------------
TASK: [ini_file dest=/etc/php5/apache2/php.ini section=PHP option=max_execution_time value=200] ***
fatal: [86.50.168.69] => failed to parse: Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/root/.ansible/tmp/ansible-1382344679.91-7968522912177/ini_file", line 1116, in <module>
    main()
  File "/root/.ansible/tmp/ansible-1382344679.91-7968522912177/ini_file", line 177, in main
    changed = do_ini(module, dest, section, option, value, state, backup)
  File "/root/.ansible/tmp/ansible-1382344679.91-7968522912177/ini_file", line 99, in do_ini
    cp.readfp(f)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/ConfigParser.py", line 324, in readfp
    self._read(fp, filename)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/ConfigParser.py", line 546, in _read
    raise e
ConfigParser.ParsingError: File contains parsing errors: /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini
 [line 1859]: ' ;size of the optimized code.\n'

[brainstorm (brainstorm)]

Reported upstream over here too: https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=65939

It is a very simple patch, it would be lovely to see it patched in the current Saucy release.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

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[brainstorm (brainstorm)]

Well, the patch applies to upstream sourcecode, it does not apply directly on the php5 ubuntu package... but again, just 1 line needs to be modified.

[Robie Basak (racb)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better.

Does this affect PHP's own parsing of php.ini, or just third party tools?

Since upstream have fixed this, I see no problem with cherry-picking it into Trusty (or waiting for a merge).

However, I'm concerned about fixing this in Saucy. It would create a conffile prompt for everyone who has changed the package. Is this really necessary? Why can't ansible users simply supply their own php.ini, if it's just ansible that has trouble parsing it?

[Robie Basak (racb)]

> for everyone who has changed the package

Sorry. I meant for everyone who has changed php.ini.

[brainstorm (brainstorm)]

Yeah, good point regarding the interactive prompt, maybe it is not worth the hassle, one could wait for upstream to converge.

Thanks for your attention!

[Robie Basak (racb)]

I'm dropping this to Priority: Low, since it's not my intention to fix this in Ubuntu directly, but instead wait for upstream.

[Lucy Llewellyn (lucyllewy)]

This issue is for Trusty Tahr, which ended mainstream support in 2019 and exits ESM in 2022. I vote we close this issue as WONTFIX (I don't have permission to set WONTFIX status on this issue).

[Robie Basak (racb)]

Thanks. Marking this Fix Released since it has been fixed in a newer Ubuntu release, but I can make a separate Trusty task Won't Fix to make the status for Trusty clear.