| Poll: Which PHP version features should CI 4 target? You do not have permission to vote in this poll. |
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| 5.4 | 20 | 23.26% | |
| 5.5 | 11 | 12.79% | |
| 5.6 | 43 | 50.00% | |
| 5.3 (unsuported already) | 1 | 1.16% | |
| This should depend on dev process | 11 | 12.79% | |
| Total | 86 vote(s) | 100% | |
| * You voted for this item. | [Show Results] |
| Which PHP 5.X version should be considered as Required |
It should be work with the version of PHP that is generally available on shared hosting services AND is still minimally supported by the PHP devs at the time of CI release.
CI has never been at the forefront of PHP modernity, whether that was intentional or not. I am of the opinion it should stay that way, because shared hosting services are always going to lag far behind what is considered current in PHP. If you want the modern features, run your own iron. (04-13-2015, 03:25 PM)albert.freeman Wrote: It should be work with the version of PHP that is generally available on shared hosting services AND is still minimally supported by the PHP devs at the time of CI release. Given that the minimum version of PHP for the CI3 release has not been supported for some time, maybe this should be revised to "...is still minimally supported by the PHP devs when development of CI4 begins." That would put it at some reasonable version of PHP 5.4, which appears to be acceptable to a large percentage of poll respondents (though not the current majority). The rest of this is not necessarily directed at the person quoted above, but just a general statement of how I feel about the "minimum supported version" of PHP. I could go with 5.5 or 5.6, because the impact on me would be minimal, but I'm fully aware that most people don't have the option of running their own servers, and the types of long-term-support OS releases that server admins like to run don't necessarily upgrade things like PHP on the schedules that developers would prefer. I know that, even with some amount of control over my own server, I still had to push to get the PHP version moved up from 5.3, because the server's administrator felt that this meant the OS needed to be upgraded to a newer version (3 years before the EOL for the OS version in question). This also means that, unless I push again, the server is likely to stay on its current PHP version (with normal patches) for 4 more years. The important thing is that, as much as possible, the framework support a minimum version which is widely available while allowing the developer to use as many newer versions as possible (as far as I know, CI3 supports every version of PHP available above its minimum requirement).
I have such question to supporters of older versions ..
Why you will need CI 4 to build applications for PHP 5.3 or PHP 5.4 Servers... You can use easier CI 3 and thats it all.. Best VPS Hosting : Digital Ocean
(04-14-2015, 10:18 AM)sv3tli0 Wrote: I have such question to supporters of older versions .. I don't need to build applications for 5.3 or 5.4 servers now, but I may not be so lucky at my next job. CI 2 will be unsupported in 6 months, how long will CI 3 be supported after CI 4 is released? Why would you support the use of an EOL framework when you are so opposed to supporting the use of a version of PHP which has reached EOL (5.3) or even one which is still supported (5.4), but which may reach EOL by the end of the development period for CI 4? What features in 5.5 or 5.6 are going to make CI 4 so much better than it would be if it targets 5.4? This is what I don't understand with people that want the framework to target 5.6 or PHP 7. Just because the framework supports PHP 5.4 doesn't mean you have to use it yourself. (04-14-2015, 11:26 AM)mwhitney Wrote:(04-14-2015, 10:18 AM)sv3tli0 Wrote: I have such question to supporters of older versions .. Answer: Just because the current way is to Wait .. CI 3 doesn't is based on PHP 5.2 which is out of date. CI 4 can get next year or even after it.. At this time many other frameworks and developers will already be focused on PHP7 and we will still keeping the old 5.4 as our Base line.. I know that you can run newer PHP version with CI 2/3 but the point is all developers to move ahead not just to be stucked at 1 place so long. Even linux distributions at the moment are using PHP 5.4/5.5 as stable versions.. in 1 year I suppose that the stable will be 5.5/5.6.. As one kids song... "Let it go, let it go.."  P.S> By the way CodeIgniter lost a lot of good developers (who started using mostly laravel) , just because it was too out of date in development process. Focusing old PHP versions which are security holes... We have to think for the future not for now or for the past.. I don't think that CI future is supporting BAD practises as using old php versions in development or at productions and etc.. Best VPS Hosting : Digital Ocean
I can play the broken record all day, but I think, eventually, it will get on everyone's nerves. You did not answer the question in the least:
What features in 5.5 or 5.6 are going to make CI 4 so much better than it would be if it targets 5.4? I think it's a fairly difficult question to answer from the point of view of a framework developer, otherwise I wouldn't bother to ask. I don't think many people have a hard time justifying the use of 5.3, and I think that while 5.4 is significantly more difficult to justify as a necessity than 5.3, it's much easier to justify than 5.5 or 5.6. (04-14-2015, 01:04 PM)mwhitney Wrote: I can play the broken record all day, but I think, eventually, it will get on everyone's nerves. You did not answer the question in the least: Nothing is too important. You can keep and 5.2 or 5.3 as base for CI 4 its fine.. "Possible old servers" where can be uploaded a new (2016 build) app with CI 4 sounds strange as a reason to keep down line of CI to is an old version as 5.4. BTW such servers will be in a lot worse condition to match all issues with the PHP it self and other things as ssl and etc if they are not proper upgraded. I have listed at the first post all difference in the version. PHP is growing in small steps if you don't want to jump often you have not to skip them as we have done that with CI 3. Although CI 3 took too much time to be released else it was not going to be a big step next CI 4 version.. PHP 5.5 has a lot of features as generators, finally and etc.. PHP 5.6 has less new features but still there very nice new operator ... and it has a lot of improvements inside it and it should be focused as the BEST of PHP 5. I agree that may be 5.6 may be too high line but less than 5.5 is a 100% mistake! Best VPS Hosting : Digital Ocean
Help me understand better ...
Half of the poll results so far show a preference for PHP 5.6. Many of the arguments for it seem to be emotional or based on PHP version EOLs. Is there a compelling technical reason to use 5.6 vs 5.5? A language feature that would make our lives a lot easier?
James Parry
Project Lead (04-14-2015, 01:20 PM)sv3tli0 Wrote: "Possible old servers" where can be uploaded a new (2016 build) app with CI 4 sounds strange as a reason to keep down line of CI to is an old version as 5.4. If I use Ubuntu LTS releases on my server, I get patches for security issues for 5 years, including security patches for most of the software. So, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS will still have PHP 5.3 when the OS reaches end of life in 2017. They may back-port security patches from newer versions of PHP to keep the server supported, but they won't back-port features or upgrade the version of PHP to 5.4+. Similarly, they'll release security patches for other software on the OS, like SSL. Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (the latest LTS release) includes PHP 5.5, and will be in service until 2019. The next LTS release isn't expected until next year, so there are no Ubuntu LTS servers running a version of PHP newer than 5.5 unless they were upgraded through other channels. Ubuntu 10.04 LTS reached end of life fairly recently, but I'm not sure what version of PHP was included on that. Other distributions may not follow the same 5-year life cycle, but most follow the same pattern of only updating the included software within a certain range of version numbers, so a given installation of the OS will never upgrade PHP 5.3 to 5.4 without upgrading the whole OS (though you can upgrade the software yourself, or add a 3rd party repository to your update software to do so, most server admins don't like to do that). (04-14-2015, 01:20 PM)sv3tli0 Wrote: I have listed at the first post all difference in the version. PHP is growing in small steps if you don't want to jump often you have not to skip them as we have done that with CI 3. I'm aware of that, and even pretty familiar with the differences. When developing a framework, namespaces and closures have some pretty obvious benefits. The other features, to me, offer diminishing returns, especially since so many of them are adding more flexible syntax rather than adding completely new features. The performance of a particular version of PHP should be irrelevant, as that benefit is available to anyone using that version, regardless of the minimum version supported by the framework.
Help me understand this better too ...
A number of comments suggest that we should be looking at using as our base the PHP version supported by hosting providers, whatever that might be. The recent surveys I have seen suggest that 5.5, while gaining momentum, still trails 5.4 in terms of provided versions. If we can't accurate predict the rate of PHP5.5 or PHP5.6 adoption by hosting providers, does that mean that we are safest sticking with 5.4?
James Parry
Project Lead |
