WoltLab
PHP 8.5 Support
We’re currently only targeting PHP 8.1-8.4 since PHP 8.5 is not yet released and dependencies had not been updated. This has changed in so far as dependencies are being updated.
State of Dependencies
$> composer why-not php 8.5
cuyz/valinor 2.2.2 requires php (~8.1.0 || ~8.2.0 || ~8.3.0 || ~8.4.0)
laminas/laminas-diactoros 3.7.0 requires php (~8.1.0 || ~8.2.0 || ~8.3.0 || ~8.4.0)
laminas/laminas-progressbar 2.14.1 requires php (~8.0.0 || ~8.1.0 || ~8.2.0 || ~8.3.0 || ~8.4.0)
laminas/laminas-stdlib 3.20.0 requires php (~8.1.0 || ~8.2.0 || ~8.3.0 || ~8.4.0)
woltlab/webp-exif v0.1.1 requires php (~8.1.0 || ~8.2.0 || ~8.3.0 || ~8.4.0)
Details on Current Blockers
| Name | Compatibility | Notes |
|---|---|---|
cuyz/valinor |
⏱️ | Unreleased, but support for 8.5 was added. |
laminas/laminas-diactoros |
v3.8.0 | Effectively compatible with 8.1 |
laminas/laminas-progressbar |
❌ | Discontinued, compatibility unknown |
laminas/laminas-stdlib |
v3.21.0 | Effectively compatible with 8.1 |
woltlab/webp-exif |
❌ | WoltLab/webp-exif#1 |
laminas/laminas-progressbar must either be replaced entirely or soft-forked (fork with only updates to the compatibility) for the time being, but this will only postpone the replacement.
Ignoring the Minimum Requirements of Libraries
So far the requirements of laminas/laminas-diactoros and laminas/laminas-stdlib formally exclude PHP 8.1 but are effectively compatible. We need to check if laminas/laminas-progressbar is compatible with PHP 8.5 and if yes we can just ship the newer version of the libraries and are able to support PHP 8.1-8.5.
PHP Support in Major Linux Distributions
| Name | PHP | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Debian 12 (oldstable) | 8.2 | Incompatible if PHP >= 8.3 |
| Debian 13 (stable) | 8.4 | |
| Ubuntu 22.04 LTS | 8.1 | Incompatible if PHP >= 8.2 |
| Ubuntu 24.04 LTS | 8.3 | |
| AlmaLinux 9.6 | 8.3 | |
| Rocky Linux 9.6 | 8.3 | |
| CentOS Stream 9 | 8.0 | Incompatible |
| CentOS Stream 10 | 8.3 |
Increasing the Minimum Supported PHP Version
The security support for PHP 8.1 expires by the end of 2025 which is really not that far off from now, with PHP 8.2 ending by the end of next year. Increasing the minimum PHP version to 8.2 would satisfy the requirements of the Laminas packages and allow us to support PHP 8.5.
Benefits of Requiring PHP 8.2
- Support for the
truetype as well as usingfalseandnullas stand-alone types. - Readonly classes for records although this is only really useful for things like parameter validation in controllers.
- The random extension which is important for #6481 but at the same time this is planned for 6.3.
#[\SensitiveParameter]is natively supported now.
All in all, PHP 8.2 is what I would consider to be a “boring” release because it offers little to improve the life of developers. This is also the primary motivation of sticking with PHP 8.1 for this release because increasing the minimum version creates friction without much gains.
Benefits of Requiring PHP 8.3
This is a bit of a different story because requiring PHP 8.3 would break the support for Debian 12 which is still popular, especially because MySQL isn’t yet offered by Oracle for Debian 13 at the time of writing. Other than that there are no other incompatibilities with popular distributions because Ubuntu 24.04 LTS already ships with 8.3. The same applies to the different flavors of “RHEL in disguise”.
- Typed class constants are a nice-to-have feature but is currently supported through PHPDoc comments.
- The DOM API has finally been updated and now supports helper functions like
contains()andinsertAdjacentElement()alongside properties like\DOMElement::$idand\DOMElement::$className. There is now also\DOMNode::$parentElementwhich is an annoying screw-up because it has existed for an eternity in browsers. #[\Override]is natively supported and thus enforced.\Random\Randomizer::getBytesFromString()is a secure replacement for generating random passwords from a list of characters.
All in all, the changes are not that big from a feature perspective – 8.4 is going to be much more exiting, for example with the native HTML 5 support for DOM. Regardless of this PHP 8.3 is going to see updates until the end of 2027 which aligns much better with the estimated life cycle of WoltLab Suite 6.2.
WoltLab Suite 6.2 will not ship with support for PHP 8.5 for multiple reasons:
- Support for PHP 8.1-8.5 is not well supported among third party libraries.
- Deprecate using values null as an array offset and when calling array_key_exists() is a wide-spread issue to the use of nullable integers as array keys, equally affecting our software and third party code. PHPStan is not yet integrated in all our products, making it significantly harder to catch these issues ahead of time.
- PHP 8.5 does not offer any significant performance improvements over 8.4 that would justify additional efforts for 6.2.
- PHP 8.4 is the highest version that ships with any stable Linux distribution, most notably Debian 13 Trixie. There is currently no need to support PHP 8.5 in order to run it with binaries provided by the distribution itself.