Do you use PHP 5.4?

[jtojnar]

selfoss still targets PHP 5.4 because it is still supported by some LTS distributions:¹

Version	PHP version	EOL	PHP EOL	Status
Debian 6 “Squeeze”	5.3	2016-02-29	2014	EOL
Debian 7 “Wheezy”	5.4	2018-05-31	2015	LTS
Debian 8 “Jessie”	5.6	April 2020	2018	Future LTS
RHEL 5	5.1?	2020-11-30	wut?	LTS
Debian 9 “Stretch”	7.0	June 2022	2019	Stable
RHEL 6	5.3	Spring 2024?	2014	LTS
RHEL 7	5.4	Autumn 2027?	2015	Stable

Switching to PHP 5.6 is not that interesting feature-wise² but the main reason for dropping old versions is libraries support. We already need to maintain TwitterOAuth ourselves and the list of incompatible libraries will only grow. Another one of our dependencies is removing support for PHP 5.4 soon.

For comparison, Nextcloud supports 5.6+, Wallabag is switching to PHP 5.6 in the next version (2.3). Wordpress is very conservative, supporting 5.2.4+.

According to Seldaek PHP 5.4 has around 3 percent share but the data come from packagist which the users that want PHP 5.4 probably do not use.

Is PHP 5.4 still relevant?

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1. Source for Debian EOL and their PHP versions. Dates for RHEL were estimated from RHEL Life Cycle and PHP versions taken from here, here and here. Official PHP dates from PHP website.
2. PHP 5.5 introduces password_hash, which will be used in selfoss 3.0 but there is a polyfill. If we dropped 5.4, we may as well kick 5.5, then we will also get generators, which I could use them for refactoring spouts.

[niol]

I do not use PHP 5.4.

[Koopzington]

Active Support for 5.6 has stopped in Jan 2017. Security Support ends Dec 2018.
Why should one even bother supporting PHP versions that aren't even officially supported by PHP itself anymore? PHP frameworks are already preparing to set the minimum version to 7.0 in their next versions.
Using 7.0 alone brings huge performance improvements. Even if it wouldn't use everything available in 7.0 and would theoretically still run on 5.6 i think pushing the minimum required version is imo a step in the right direction to peacefully force users to upgrade their ancient unsecure systems.

[jtojnar]

@Koopzington Not being supported by PHP team does not mean much in classic distributions like Debian or RHEL. Packages on those systems do not usually use official updates anyway, important stuff is backported.

Moreover, while I personally prefer upstream packages, some of our users, especially in poorer countries, may use cheapest servers available that often use oldest supported LTS version at best. Switching to better provider might not be a possibility for them.

[schmanat]

I'm using PHP 7.0, because its in the repo from Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

[jtojnar]

Does not seem to be an issue for users here. I will add the following message in 2.18 for PHP < 5.6. If there is not a big fuss, 3.0 will raise the requirements.

We are considering dropping support of older PHP versions. If you cannot upgrade, please let us know in the issue tracker.

[daftaupe]

Hello, I use PHP 5.4 as I'm using CentOS 7. That's what in the official repos, though one can use SCL to get up to PHP 7.1 if I'm correct.

[rnwgnr]

No need for PHP 5.4 on my side :)