Help with php4-common

[Ryan Thiessen]

I am trying to install the popular web application framework Horde on
my Ubuntu server, but I am coming across some odd problems that seem
difficult to overcome.  An integral component of the program, imp3,
depends on php4-imap which depends on php4-common which is not
available.  It seems that in Debian Sid php4 is packaged as
"php4-common" with a metapackage "php4", while in Ubuntu the master
package is just simply php4 and there is no php4-common package that I
can find.  This makes any package that depends on php4-common to be
uninstallable.

My question is, why was this configuration changed for Ubuntu, and was
any thought given towards a workaround for those applications that
depend on it?  I am okay with rebuilding Debian packages for Ubuntu,
but the php4 packages seem to be very complex and I don't want to
replace them if the Ubuntu packager had a good reason for the current
configuration.  Is my best solution to recompile php4 from the
original source?
-- 
Cheers,
-Ryan Thiessen-