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Minimum PHP Version

Since we have not had this discussion in a while, which means a few weeks lol, I thought I'd start one again :D Way back, when 2.1 was first started it was 5.0, this somewhat quickly moved to 5.1 with no objections (I will not say why)

We maintained that requirement throughout our work on ElkArte, and the min versions remains at 5.1.2.  TBH I have not tested things under 5.1 in some time, so that's a "it should work", meaning we have not used functions or constructs, knowingly , that break that support.

Now PHP 5.1 official support ended in August of 2006, PHP 5.3 released in 2009 had its last update last year and I think it is slated to have official support end this year, so its no spring chicken itself.  I got to thinking about 1.1 and per our thoughts, maintaining the same base requirements, meaning 5.1 in 2015 which was hard to even type !

Perhaps for 1.0, we say the minimum supported version is 5.3, although it should work on 5.1 we don't necessary promote that aspect as we want to move to something newer in 1.1?  I can't believe there are many hosts that don't have 5.3 available, but the web can be a strange place.  I took a quick look at recent forum scripts and came away with this for the current versions, not sure what may be in development. Xen - 5.2.4+, pbpbb3 - 5.3.3 , wedge - 5.3, IPS - 5.2, vb5 - 5.3.0, vanilla - 5.2, mybb - 5.1

Server stats can be a bit dicey, but from here PHP 5.x is 97.7 available, and from there the break down is:
Version 5.3 52.1%
Version 5.2 31.9%
Version 5.4 13.1%
Version 5.1 .7%
Version 5.5 .2%
Version 5.0 .1%
Version 5.6 <.1%
Version 5.7 .<1%

5.1 covers 99% of the 97.7% = safe
5.2 covers 98% of the 97.7% = safe
5.3 coves 66.5% of 97.7% = some potential loss

I'm surprised at 5.2 being as high as it is, but that does not mean those sites don't also have 5.3 available as often on hosts you get a choice.  Anyway wanted to get others thoughts, some of this is future proofing things and of course the fewer versions we need to test on the better.  Right now our automated tests run on 5.3, 5.4, 5.5.

Re: Minimum PHP Version

Reply #1

Well well .. just noticed a function that we use has a min version of 5.2 ... Sooooo about that 5.1 thing :P

Re: Minimum PHP Version

Reply #2

Are we doing any kind of check to let them know in the installer if they don't meet minimum requirements?
Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion, you must set yourself on fire!

Re: Minimum PHP Version

Reply #3

Quote from: Spuds – Well well .. just noticed a function that we use has a min version of 5.2 ... Sooooo about that 5.1 thing :P
Im fine with 5.2 for 1.0 since we already use it, however I'd not bump 1.0 to PHP 5.3.  It's too late for a new round of refactoring for 1.0 (Lambda, namespaces and all that). Let's push 1.0 to RC or Final ASAP and start a DEV branch for Elk 1.1 (with PHP 5.3 +)
Thorsten "TE" Eurich
------------------------

Re: Minimum PHP Version

Reply #4

Quote from: IchBin – Are we doing any kind of check to let them know in the installer if they don't meet minimum requirements?
Yup a check is in there now for 5.1.2, but as noted this needs to change to 5.2 since that is actually the minimum.

Quote from: TE – Im fine with 5.2 for 1.0 since we already use it, however I'd not bump 1.0 to PHP 5.3.  It's too late for a new round of refactoring for 1.0 (Lambda, namespaces and all that). Let's push 1.0 to RC or Final ASAP and start a DEV branch for Elk 1.1 (with PHP 5.3 +)
Yes your right, we (ok me  O:-) ) need to stop (other than the bugs) messing with 1.0 and get a 1.1 underway.

I'm thinking the installer does a 5.2 check (kind of have to anyway) but we say 5.3 recommended in our docs ... just looking for the wiggle room to bump 1.1 to 5.3 official (lambda functions etc) without saying that should be a 2.0 since we changed the min version requirements.  Semantics I know.  5.2 also lets us rely on basic json_encode so that can be done as well (meaning remove the compat function from 1.0)

Re: Minimum PHP Version

Reply #5

Good, then:
1. 1.0 => 5.2. (any particular micro version?)
2. because of 1, drop of backward compat for json functions
3. create a development branch to start playing with 1.1
Did I miss anything?
Bugs creator.
Features destroyer.
Template killer.

Re: Minimum PHP Version

Reply #6

Redhat and its variants (CentOS, Fedora, etc.) were all using 5.2.9 for a very long time. RH 5 was standard for way too long and that's what it had in its repo.

Looks good :)

Re: Minimum PHP Version

Reply #7

5.2 is all good. But as spuds remarked, just because 5.3 is <66% market share doesn't mean it's not available on all these servers. It can usually be installed it enabled with a setting.

I went for 5.3 in Wedge because I figured a host with 5.3+ is more likely to be up to date in all areas. It's a no brainer to me. Go for 5.2 in 1.0 because yeah it's a bit late to test, but 5.1 is pointless.
;)

Re: Minimum PHP Version

Reply #8

>= php 5.4  8)
Sorry for my English

Re: Minimum PHP Version

Reply #9

Is there a maximum supported PHP version?

SMF devs seem to recommend against PHP 5.5+ for example.

My test Elkarte forum is running on NGINX + PHP 5.5 without issues, AFAIK.

Re: Minimum PHP Version

Reply #10

Not that I remember. And re-reading the 5.5 to 5.6 migration guide I can't see anything that could break ElkArte.

Anyway, the current (still rather small) set of automated tests are performed using PHP 5.3, 5.4 and 5.5. But these tests cover just a small fraction of the code.
On my localhost I have 5.4.

Set PHP 5.4 as a minimum seems a quite high bar to me...
Bugs creator.
Features destroyer.
Template killer.

Re: Minimum PHP Version

Reply #11

I use Elkarte on Nginx 1.7.4, MariaDB 5.5.39, and PHP 5.6.0 without any problem yet. :)
192.MY.ID: Forum ISP Indonesia.

Re: Minimum PHP Version

Reply #12

Quote from: kucing – I use Elkarte on Nginx 1.7.4, MariaDB 5.5.39, and PHP 5.6.0 without any problem yet. :)
Good to hear ! ...

I have not done any 5.6 testing at all.  I currently run Elkarte on PHP: 5.5.9 (fpm) with nginx/1.4.6 without any issues.

Re: Minimum PHP Version

Reply #13

ElkArte 1.0.xx is working on php 7? Or php 7 not recommended for 1.0.xx? Someone has a forum on this version of PHP?
Sorry for my English

Re: Minimum PHP Version

Reply #14

I used php7.1 on EA1.0 and it's working fine and fast too. ;)