Why do fixes of PHP Bugs/Features take so long?

This may not be strictly programming-related.

How come PHP Features / Bugs that seem important(*) always take a while to be developped?

For example, in PHP most sorting functions support the SORT_LOCALE_STRING, which allows an array of elements to be sorted depending on the system's locale. Most of them, except for the super-useful array_multisort.

A bug has apparently been开发者_开发技巧 filed on 30 Oct 2007, more than two years ago, and its status is still 'Open'.

Is there a way to speed up the process? Maybe help in the development? (The feature I'm referring to should not take too long, as it's a feature already implemented in other sort functions)

(*) I know "important" is subjective, but this particular feature would help improve the consistency of the language...

Take a look at the php code base and find out for yourself. often a simple bug is not so simple under the covers. It might break existing things etc. There are millions of sites out there that depend on php. If a bug fix affects that compatibility, there is a bigger problem than the bug in the first place. The cure is worse than the cold kinda thing.

Take a look at the code for yourself.

Submitting a patch is always helpful in speeding up bug fixes

In my opinion thats a general problem with open source software. Since it is mostly based on volunteer work, there are no deadlines for the developers and developers can do whatever they want. If nobody bothers fixing a bug you consider important, then nobody will fix it. And since your not a customer (as with a commercial product) but you're just one of the many users, you have little to no effect in the development trajectory.

PHP is messed up, because it wasn't designed, it just evolved from a series of Perl libraries and quick "clever" hacks from the dawn of web programming.

Consider using Python, which is better managed and includes mature Unicode support.

For your specific task, you probably can inject custom sorting order by using custom comparison function.