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Drop support of too old PHP versions - sv3tli0 - 11-01-2014

Hi

Its great that CI provide support back to PHP 5.2.xx but its time to move forward. PHP already started its moving to next major 7.0 and we shouldn't stay too far away from it.

It will be great if we start using (already Old) features NAMESPACES(this is from MAJOR importance), traits and others, at the same time we should be up to date and Not to support MYSQL lib for example (only PDO and MYSQLi).
Another moment is that such old PHP versions are NOT Security Safe so its against any logic to keep the framework on such old version support.

For that purpose I think that we should start discussing future major release. Where the CI should take one nice UPDATE.
Of course my idea is not to change all CI concepts, no it is to update them and to use all features of the actual PHP (atleast 5.4 or even 5.5).

Regards


RE: Drop support of too old PHP versions - no1youknowz - 11-01-2014

What's so great about CI being MIT. Is that you are only limited by your own expertise or time.

You can right now take CI and redevelop it for PHP 5.6. There is literally nothing stopping you from doing this.

Want to move on from 5.2 and have the framework take advantage of 5.6 functions. Done.
Want to port any new work on CI at a future date to your own "CI" framework. Done.
Want to develop a fork of CI with support of namespaces, composer and all the other complaints of CI. Done also.

Why wait for other people to eventually do the work? There is a steering group, which may or may not have your own vision of where CI should go and internal politics may get in the way and delay future releases. Etc, etc. None of this occurs when its your own framework.

The great thing about PHP, is that if you don't like something. Build your own, put what you need into it and move on from there.

There really isn't that much to CI either. It shouldnt take someone very long to build it much better and much faster than it is now.


RE: Drop support of too old PHP versions - ivantcholakov - 11-02-2014

+1 for PHP 5.6. By the time when the next major CI release gets ready, PHP 5.6 would be a normal requirement.


RE: Drop support of too old PHP versions - GrigoreMihai - 11-06-2014

From my point of view this is the only path to take in CI development. Changes are for the best. Smile


RE: Drop support of too old PHP versions - Chroma - 11-08-2014

I think the original poster is onto something.

PHP 5.3 is already end of life.

Is it a good idea to encourage people to continue with outdated and insecure foundations to what are generally a hostile environment on the internet at large?


RE: Drop support of too old PHP versions - Shawn P - 11-12-2014

5.4 is done also and will be EOL in 1 year. So ideally build for 5.5, and go from there imo.


RE: Drop support of too old PHP versions - no1youknowz - 11-12-2014

(11-12-2014, 04:29 PM)Shawn P Wrote: 5.4 is done also and will be EOL in 1 year. So ideally build for 5.5, and go from there imo.

That's why I have been saying all along to build for 5.5/5.6. But noooo, I get accused of trolling lol. Rolleyes


RE: Drop support of too old PHP versions - mwhitney - 11-13-2014

Usually you want to build a framework to support the versions of PHP most likely to be installed on servers at the time of release. Currently, PHP 5.3 accounts for almost half of the websites using PHP (per http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-php/5/all ). The scary part is that 5.2 accounts for nearly as many sites as 5.4, but once you go to 5.5+, you're talking about just over 5%.

While there is some room for a coordinated effort by PHP framework developers to push the server vendors/operators to upgrade their PHP versions, most developers have to look at their potential user base to determine what version they use as their minimum supported version.

With that said, there's nothing stopping you from using a newer version of PHP on your server, or from using all of those new features in your own code. Even if the minimum version for CI was increased to 5.6, I don't think you'd see a 3.x release with the CI code refactored/rewritten to namespace the core classes and libraries.


RE: Drop support of too old PHP versions - sv3tli0 - 11-13-2014

5.6 sounds too much Smile
mwhitney - I agree that many sites are using < 5.3 but those sites are old and there is no development.

As you all know PHP development started work over PHP 7.0, so there must be a lot of planning with the next major and the one after it.
CI 3.0 is almost in Final so it will kee current minimum at 5.2.x.
The first major after CI 3.0 may be build in with the powers of PHP 5.4.
Just refactorization of the framework to use Namespaces and perhaps Traits will take a huge amount of time.


RE: Drop support of too old PHP versions - mwhitney - 11-13-2014

(11-13-2014, 01:58 PM)sv3tli0 Wrote: mwhitney - I agree that many sites are using < 5.3 but those sites are old and there is no development.

I can hope 5.2 and earlier represents sites which are not still in active development, but I know that my site is on its current server in part because the version of PHP available on its previous host was even older, and there are plenty of people still actively developing sites on that host (though I believe it has been upgraded since). Even when I can talk to my server's admin face-to-face, it took what I consider to be fairly drastic action to get past 5.3, even after it went to end-of-life, because the OS on the server was still in it's "support" lifecycle (for another 2 years from now), but there was no sign that PHP was going to get an upgrade without going outside the supported releases.