[pkg-php-pear] Bug#822771: xml actually missing from php5

[Ivan Sergio Borgonovo]

Possibly I got a clue.

There is just a php-xml and no php5-xml or php7-xml packages.

Looking in /etc/php/5.6/mods-available there is no xml.ini while there 
is a xml.ini in /etc/php/7.0/mods-available

After installing php7.0-cli

ivan at caronte:~$ php5.6 xml.php
PHP Fatal error:  Call to undefined function xml_parser_create() in 
/home/ivan/xml.php on line 3

while

ivan at caronte:~$ php7.0 xml.php
doesn't report any error.

I was not able to uninstall php7 due to dependencies.

These and only these packages where automatically installed even if I 
didn't explicitly asked to install php7:
php7.0-common
php7.0-gd
php7.0-json
php7.0-mbstring
php7.0-xml

Trying to purge php7.0-xml says it depends on php-xml but horde depends 
on it.

I'm not completely convinced it is a php/xml problem only.
I'll try to understand what a proper installation of xml should be for 
php5 and see if I can fix it it manually if it's just a matter of 
configuration files but evidently at least there is a problem with php5 
and xml.

BTW I did try to aptitude reinstall php-xml but it didn't help.

-- 
Ivan Sergio Borgonovo
http://www.webthatworks.it