Remove unused Zend libraries

[colinmollenhour]

As ZF1 is basically a dead project and there is a lot of code in lib/Zend that is not used by Magento and highly unlikely to ever be used by anyone using Magento, and that the code is easily available to those that want it I propose we remove Zend libraries that are not used by Magento core code from the repository. The presence of this code encourages it's use and to some may imply that it is supported code. Since it is neither supported nor it's use encouraged I think it does much more harm than good. Lastly, it is just a bunch of cruft that slows down IDEs, CI, code searching, etc. For example, everything under Zend_Service. These are extremely buggy even when they were supported and largely obsolete.

I propose that each subdirectory directly under lib/Zend be checked to see if it is used in app/code or lib/Varien and if not it should be considered for removal (only not removed if there is a really good reason) and then of course all Magento functionality tested. In addition it would make sense to also remove some subdirectories of libraries that are in use, such as unused adapters in Zend/Db/Adapter.

Reducing the Zend code down to only what is actually used would make it much easier to audit security and search for bugs and such. As of now there is so much code in lib/Zend that really thoroughly inspecting it is impractical.

This does have a potential to break third-party extensions that are dependent on libs that get removed but this can easily be detected and fixed by packaging the needed libs directly with the extension.

[tomekjordan]

"This does have a potential to break third-party extensions that are dependent on libs that get removed but this can easily be detected and fixed by packaging the needed libs directly with the extension."
yes, by devlopers, not by normal merchant with some IT skills...

I use plenty of extensions and I would like to avoid any problems.... but even don't know "how to easyily detect Zend packages needed by 3rd party extensions"..

hope you understand my point of view

Tomek

[colinmollenhour]

Sure, I use one in a couple extensions myself so I understand your point of view. In my case it is Zend_Gdata and it has a massive bug that I reported years ago which was never fixed which causes the entire spreadsheet to be downloaded into memory when the spreadsheet metadata is needed (every time a single request is made). This can easily consume over a gig of ram. Another example is the S3 class which only supports the original US east region. It has bugs and uses the old API that will eventually be deprecated and there is an official AWS lib that is well-maintained that should be used instead but people use the Zend one because it is there.

By "easily detect" I meant you will get Fatal errors due to class names that can't be resolved. Restore the missing files and the issue is fixed.

If you really want to avoid the issue using the sledgehammer approach you could just restore an old copy of lib/Zend or copy it into app/code/local/Zend and be done with it, but I don't recommend this.

My point is in short that there is a lot of code to maintain and it is a liability. Removing code that is there only because it was packaged with ZF1 back when it was all (sort of) maintained is prudent, in my opinion. However, it is certainly open for discussion so everyone's opinion is valued.

[infabo]

hm, I can at least remember having used Zend_Validate in one of my extensions - but replaced it with Respect/Validation at an early refactoring stage ;).

[colinmollenhour]

Zend_Validate is already used by Magento core so would not be a candidate for removal.

[sreichel]

I like the idea to remove dead code. First place to start code be code/core/Zend. All these classes are loaded instead of lib/Zend ...

[sreichel]

Another thing that can be deleted is XmlConnect code. It's deactivated by default and depends on some Enterprise_ classes that are not availble in CE.

[akira28]

First thing I would do is update zf to the latest version available 1.12.20.
As zf1 is a eoled product, I would then merge the classes from code/core/Zend in lib/Zend. Finally, delete all the unused parts of z1

[Flyingmana]

we could start this by moving all expected to be unused libraries into a legacy_lib directory, so we dont have them in the include path by default anymore, but people who face problems, can easily add them again