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
On 8/14/14, Tyler Romeo tylerromeo@gmail.com wrote:
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
These aren't the sort of stats I think we should base the decision on. Instead we should look at what most popular hosts support (Which will probably be correlated with what is written above). Although I don't know if those stats are easily available.
Additionally, looking at Special:Version on 'pedia:
PHP 5.3.10-1ubuntu3.10+wmf1 (apache2handler)
I know that's going to change very soon, but until it does, this conversation seems like a non-starter.
- Raise to PHP 5.5 for MW 1.24
- Raise to PHP 5.4 for MW 1.24, and then when a release with support past
2018 is made, go to 5.5.
imo, deciding what min version to require should be based on a combination of: use cases for features in the new version that we want to use, maintenance burden of supporting old versions, and the amount of inconvenience caused to re-users by the version requirement change. This seems more like requiring a new version of php simply because its new.
--bawolff
On Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 3:06 PM, Brian Wolff bawolff@gmail.com wrote:
Additionally, looking at Special:Version on 'pedia:
PHP 5.3.10-1ubuntu3.10+wmf1 (apache2handler)
I know that's going to change very soon, but until it does, this conversation seems like a non-starter.
This.
At the least, any change to the supported version of PHP isn't going to happen until the WMF cluster gets updated, and the decision must be informed by what version the WMF cluster gets updated to (which may be HHVM rather than Zend).
Ah, I was not aware WMF has still on 5.3. I guess we’ll revisit this in a few months or something then. -- Tyler Romeo 0x405D34A7C86B42DF
From: Brad Jorsch (Anomie) bjorsch@wikimedia.org Reply: Wikimedia developers wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org> Date: August 14, 2014 at 15:13:03 To: Wikimedia developers wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org> Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] PHP 5.3 EOL and MediaWiki 1.24
This.
At the least, any change to the supported version of PHP isn't going to happen until the WMF cluster gets updated, and the decision must be informed by what version the WMF cluster gets updated to (which may be HHVM rather than Zend).
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org