[RFC|Merged] Require PHP 5.3

[igorw]

Thanks for the stats, I will make a PR. I don't think there are any arguments against it now.

[Erik Frèrejean]

Thanks for the stats, I will make a PR. I don't think there are any arguments against it now.

I honestly can't understand how its so easily dismissed that currently over half the phpBB installations are on a 5.2 system, and that over more than a year that percentage did decrease by as little as 7.7 percentage point. So assume that, that rate will increase significant before the 3.1 release and risk a big portion of the user base not able to upgrade, which is something I still vote against because it is still pretty vague what advantage it will bring (terms like could/would/think), while the major disadvantage at this moment shows in the stats.

[Oleg]

The question is not what percentage of hosts currently offer version X, but rather what percentage of hosts are unable to offer version X.

A big issue is what version ships with the distribution that hosts use. LAMP stack pieces must be compiled together, otherwise they won't work. Therefore if we require hosts to compile php in order to use phpbb this is a significant, and likely unacceptable, burden, as they would have to also recompile everything else running in their apaches.

The current situation is all major distributions are shipping 5.3. This means their QA processes verified that their php packages work with 5.3. 5.3 has been around long enough and is installed on enough servers that all maintained php software by now should be 5.3-compatible. Which means there should not be a problem with using 5.3 in production at this time.

What that means in turn is the only reason hosts still run 5.2 is because they have no incentive to upgrade to 5.3. With ajax being added and stylesheet refactoring we have a choice between reimplementing assetic, not shipping asset management or requiring 5.3 to use assetic. Of these three options requiring 5.3 has no drawbacks other than requiring hosts to upgrade, but this is exactly the sort of incentive they need to upgrade.

risk a big portion of the user base not able to upgrade

This risk is essentially nonexistent.

[callumacrae]

Thanks for the stats, I will make a PR. I don't think there are any arguments against it now.

I honestly can't understand how its so easily dismissed that currently over half the phpBB installations are on a 5.2 system, and that over more than a year that percentage did decrease by as little as 7.7 percentage point. So assume that, that rate will increase significant before the 3.1 release and risk a big portion of the user base not able to upgrade, which is something I still vote against because it is still pretty vague what advantage it will bring (terms like could/would/think), while the major disadvantage at this moment shows in the stats.

+1 to this, and -1 to the RFC.

[wGEric]

The hosts phpBB suggests don't even support 5.3.

Bluehost: https://my.bluehost.com/cgi/help/386
Hostmonster: https://my.hostmonster.com/cgi/help/386
Fastdomain: https://my.fastdomain.com/cgi/help/386

[Erik Frèrejean]

risk a big portion of the user base not able to upgrade

This risk is essentially nonexistent.

No because 59.9% is a nonexistent portion.

[A_Jelly_Doughnut]

The way I see this is the following: We want to finish 3.1 as soon as possible. Extensions need to be finished to release 3.1. Extensions would be easier and quicker to implement fully if we could use third party components for them. Third party components we would like to use for extensions require PHP 5.3. So let's just require PHP 5.3, to get 3.1 done already, so we can move on.

Perfect. +1

[bantu]

I have considered the information provided in this topic and come to the conclustion that upgrading requirements to PHP 5.3 is "okay" to do.

[naderman]

The hosts phpBB suggests don't even support 5.3.

Bluehost: https://my.bluehost.com/cgi/help/386
Hostmonster: https://my.hostmonster.com/cgi/help/386
Fastdomain: https://my.fastdomain.com/cgi/help/386

That might be the case, but we are talking about them moving to a newer version of PHP in the future. And they quite certainly will move to 5.3 eventually.

Oleg quite correctly points out, that the cost of upgrading to PHP5.3 is very low now, so yes the percentages will start to shift more strongly.

Can someone please create a ticket for changing the warning in the next 3.0 release, and changing requirements info for 3.1? We will also have to announce this change on phpbb.com.

[imkingdavid]

Can someone please create a ticket for changing the warning in the next 3.0 release, and changing requirements info for 3.1? We will also have to announce this change on phpbb.com.

Will do. EDIT: Did