Hi everybody,
So we had a discussion about this a while ago, but just recently PHP let out the final 5.3 release. [0] Back in the previous thread concerning PHP 5.3, there seemed to be general agreement toward upping our PHP minimum requirements for the 1.24 release of MediaWiki.
Here are the stats: * Soon Ubuntu (trusty) and Debian (jessie) releases will be running PHP 5.5 and 5.6, respectively. * MediaWiki 1.23 ends support in May 2017 * PHP 5.4 is estimated to be supported until 2015 * Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (PHP 5.3) ends support on April 26, 2017 * Debian Squeeze (PHP 5.3) ends support in February 2016 * Debian Wheezy (PHP 5.4) *might* be supported until May 2018, depending on the feedback received from the Squeeze LTS trial
The results of this timeline are that when MediaWiki 1.23 ends support, most supported distros will be on PHP 5.5 or higher (yes, not 5.4, but 5.5).
With that in mind, I'd like to move to raise our PHP minimum version. Unless there are people that disagree, it is no longer a question of whether to raise it or not, but rather what we want to raise it to. I believe we have a couple of options:
1) Raise to PHP 5.5 for MW 1.24 2) Raise to PHP 5.4 for MW 1.24, and then when a release with support past 2018 is made, go to 5.5.
Option 2 takes advantage of the possible gap in coverage we will face should Debian Wheezy receive LTS support.
Thoughts?
[0] http://php.net/archive/2014.php?050329#id2014-08-14-1
*-- * *Tyler Romeo* Stevens Institute of Technology, Class of 2016 Major in Computer Science