[RFC|Merged] Require PHP 5.3

[Oleg]

phpBB 3.1 "Ascraeus" to require PHP 5.3.2

The next major release of phpBB, phpBB 3.1 "Ascraeus", will require PHP 5.3.2 or newer.

PHP 5.3 provides important functionality that a number of established projects are using. As it is phpBB's goal to use components from other projects where doing so makes sense, raising minimum PHP version to 5.3 allows phpBB to reuse some components from Symfony instead of reimplementing equivalent functionality. This will speed up the completion of phpBB 3.1 by reducing the amount of work that Development Team has to do.

You can read the discussion leading to the decision.

All major distributions are already shipping PHP 5.3.2 or newer in their current stable versions. You can find a table of several distributions and the versions they ship here.

phpBB 3.0 "Olympus" will continue to require PHP 4.3.3 as the minimum version.

phpBB 3.0.10 supports PHP 5.3. Since PHP 5.2 is no longer maintained by PHP developers, all users not already running PHP 5.3 are strongly encouraged to move to PHP 5.3.

As phpBB 3.1 "Ascraeus" is still under active development, there is still plenty of time to upgrade your PHP installation.

Additionally, one should note that this announcement does not imply that phpBB 3.1 will see large portions of code rewritten in order to take advantage of new features in PHP 5.3. Instead, sections of code will be updated as needed in the 3.x release cycle.

[igorw]

Not sure if I'm being optimistic or diplomatic here, but:

As phpBB 3.1 "Ascraeus" is still under active development, there is still plenty of time to upgrade your PHP installation.

Should imo be:

As phpBB 3.1 "Ascraeus" is still under active development, there is still some time to upgrade your PHP installation.

Apart from that, thumbsup.

[Oleg]

That part can be taken out entirely along with the last paragraph.

[callumacrae]

PHP 5.4.0 was just release – now I agree with dropping support for 5.2 xD

[JoshyPHP]

Incidentally, php-dev is already talking about EOL'ing 5.3.

[callumacrae]

Incidentally, php-dev is already talking about EOL'ing 5.3.

Yeah, they always do. It you look at previous EOL RFCs, they generally take four or five years to go through.

[Oleg]

This RFC needs movement as it is now blocking hooks via the dispatcher.

[imkingdavid]

We need:
...
2. Ticket/PR for 3.1 to add an install check/whatever other checks we already have for 5.3 and refuse to install if it is not met. Note that we have the acp environment checks PR fixed and waiting for another review pass, it would be great to review that one and test it with the 5.2 to 5.3 bump.
...

Pull Request

[MichaelC]

We need:
...
2. Ticket/PR for 3.1 to add an install check/whatever other checks we already have for 5.3 and refuse to install if it is not met. Note that we have the acp environment checks PR fixed and waiting for another review pass, it would be great to review that one and test it with the 5.2 to 5.3 bump.
...

Pull Request

https://github.com/phpbb/phpbb3/pull/318

Environment checks, it needs to check current installs as well as new installs.

[imkingdavid]

For the record

1. Ticket/PR for 3.0 to add a note/warning.

Cannot be done until:

3. Announcement on .com, is that Nils' prerogative or can anyone make it? What is the procedure for that?

Once that's posted, the change is quite simple, just updating the PHP version number in includes/acp/acp_main.php and changing the link to that of the new announcement.

https://github.com/phpbb/phpbb3/pull/318

Before that gets merged it will need to be changed for 5.3.2 here.

Environment checks, it needs to check current installs as well as new installs.

It will. The first PR is only for new installs. I cannot do the second PR (which is to check current installs) until the announcement is posted, as I said above.