Support PHP 7.3 / 7.4

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pierrepercee
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Support PHP 7.3 / 7.4

Post by pierrepercee »

From next March some hosting providers will make their customers pay a supplement for the maintenance of a version 7.2 (I'm talking about an important hosting provider).
In the official documentation you talk about version 2.3 for the support of PHP 7.4.
I think that on the forge the maximum version of php supported for a module should be explicitly mentioned.
Also on the CMSMS download page, the latest supported PHP version should be clearly indicated.
This would save a lot of time for everyone and it doesn't cost the developers anything. I imagine that before a new version is released, it is tested under different PHP environments.
deactivated010521

Re: Support PHP 7.3 / 7.4

Post by deactivated010521 »

That is correct.

The "offical" documentation reads: https://docs.cmsmadesimple.org/installa ... quirements

Code: Select all

Currently supported PHP versions:
    Minimum: 5.6 (end of life - will not be supported in the 2.3.x series)
    Recommended: 7.2
    Maximum: 7.2 (7.3 & 7.4 should work, but will not be officially supported until CMSMS 2.3)
    Note: some third-party modules have specific PHP version requirements.
"Unofficial" you can run CMSMS under PHP 7.4.x but you have to test yourself if it works. Like your suggestion to mention supported PHP versions in the Forge.

If you have a look at the PHP release notes you can see that the only PHP versions with active support are PHP 7.4, PHP 8.0. PHP 7.2 is EOL.

Code: Select all

version - release  - active s - sec s
PHP 5.6 - Aug 2014 - ??? ???? - Dec 2018
PHP 7.0 - Dec 2015 - ??? ???? - Dec 2018
PHP 7.1 - Dec 2016 - ??? ???? - Dec 2019
PHP 7.2 - Nov 2017 - ??? ???? - Nov 2020
PHP 7.3 - Dec 2018 - Dec 2020 - Dec 2021 <-- (1 YEAR to move away )
PHP 7.4 - Nov 2019 - Nov 2021 - Nov 2022 <-- (Current)
PHP 8.0 - Nov 2020 - Nov 2022 - Nov 2023 <-- (Current)
It is understandable that hosters are moving away from legacy PHP versions and are adding costs if you want to run versions that do not get any security updates anymore.

For the moment I have frozen all my CMSMS projects in Linux Containers (LXC/LXD) and won' t do any upgrades anymore. This way I can give myself and my clients dependend on PHP 7.2 and CMSMS some breath space (till April 2023) and have a bit more control myself. VPS hosting is cheap.
distro - release date - eol - hwe
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) - Apr 2018 - Apr 2023 - Apr 2028 (PHP 7.2.24)
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) - Apr 2020 - Apr 2025 - Apr 2030 (PHP 7.4.3)
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DIGI3
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Re: Support PHP 7.3 / 7.4

Post by DIGI3 »

I've updated the documentation to include 7.3 as the recommended version. 7.4 works fine but may have some extra warnings/notices in the error log, those tend to get cleaned up in minor releases as we discover them.

The forge is legacy software and not trivial to add features to. If a community member experienced with Ruby on Rails wishes to work on it we can certainly facilitate that. A complete rebuild is one of our big upcoming tasks, and adding php version compatibility for core releases, and possibly third-party modules, is one of the tentative features on the wish list.
Not getting the answer you need? CMSMS support options
pierrepercee
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Re: Support PHP 7.3 / 7.4

Post by pierrepercee »

@deactivated010521,

Many thanks for your very detailed answer. Your choice to freeze all cmsms projects is unfortunately not always possible, it sometimes depends on the maintenance contracts subscribed with customers...

@digi3
This is very good news. I didn't know that Forge required Ruby skills. That must be a limiting factor. Anyway, good luck to the development team for this redesign and thanks to you for this detailed answer.
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