On 19/02/14 04:48, Trevor Parscal wrote:
PHP 5.4 added a few important features[1], namely traits, shorthand array syntax, and function array dereferencing.
For the record, I am fine with those three features being used in MediaWiki code, once we drop support for 5.3.
I've heard that 5.3 is nearing end of life.
I propose we drop support for PHP 5.3 soon, if possible.
Let's drop support for 5.3 after we switch the WMF servers to 5.4 or later. I think it would be inconvenient to be unable to run our software on our own servers. If you remember, that was also the trigger used for the dropping of PHP 4.x support, and also MySQL 4.0.x.
I think it is likely that this will be after April. So MW 1.23 will require PHP 5.3. After the WMF servers are switched over and 1.23 is out, we can consider general popularity. But I don't think we have to wait for Ubuntu 12.04 to go out of its support period or for usage of it to decline to 1% or anything like that. I think we are talking about mid-to-late 2014, depending on what happens with HHVM and the Ubuntu 14.04 migration project.
-- Tim Starling