Mark Jaquith 7:54 pm on July 9, 2010

Suggest topics for the July 15, 2010 dev…

Suggest topics for the July 15, 2010 dev chat.

Mark Jaquith 7:55 pm on July 9, 2010

PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher 4 EOL discussion.
filosofo 2:59 am on July 10, 2010

What do the current phone-home stats show as the version use?
- Mark Jaquith 5:20 am on July 10, 2010
  
  For WordPress 2.7 and higher, 7.56% are using PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher 4.
  
  For WordPress 2.7 and higher, 3.60% are using PHP 5.0.x or 5.1.x.
  
  Combined, that is 11.16% of WordPress installs using a PHP version lower than 5.2.
  
  However, we considered that people running an older branchbranch A directory in Subversion. WordPress uses branches to store the latest development code for each major release (3.9, 4.0, etc.). Branches are then updated with code for any minor releases of that branch. Sometimes, a major version of WordPress and its minor versions are collectively referred to as a "branch", such as "the 4.0 branch". of WordPress might be disproportionately using older versions of PHP, because of self-managed servers or a lazy hosting provider. We’re waiting on that data. Little elves are running in a hamster wheel. 🙂
  
  It is expected that if we announce an EOL for PHP versions less than 5.2, and give enough warning, that some hosts will upgrade (or change their default). So those numbers will go down. Also consider that both Drupal and Joomla are going to require PHP 5.2 sometime this year. If WordPress was on board, that would be a heck of a motivating factor for the laggards.
  - Xavier 11:58 am on July 10, 2010
    
    Big and excellent move. It might be the right time to launch such a discussion, with the current cycle focused on 3.org, minds can still be made before the team moves into actual coding in September. If we count an approximate 3 months of dev time for 3.1 (provided that is the version that would receive such treatment), that leaves half a year of Internet-evolution before the move is applied.
    
    Now of course, it might be decided to go slow and only place some more PHP5 warnings into the 3.1 code, and make the complete move at a later time (PHP5 -> 3.5? argl).
    
    Now, one thing that could be useful, along with phone-home stats, is to dive into a list of hosts and see how well they are prepared for such a move — and maybe start a mailing campaign to get ready.
    
    A joint announcement with Drupal and Joomla would certainly help, too.
  - Andrew Nacin 12:07 pm on July 10, 2010
    
    Drupal made their plans known a few years ago that version 7 would be PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher 5.2. I’m not sure when Joomla announced their plans, but 1.6 is currently in late betaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. and it also requires PHP 5.2.
    
    My opinion (at least before we queried these stats yesterday) is in 3.2 we should bump the limit, remove compat code, etc. What’s killing us is testing coverage, not the lack of PHP5 features. If we do any “You’re running PHP 4” warnings that’d be for 3.1. But we’ll discuss at the dev meeting. Most importantly, reaching a decision and announcing a firm date now provides hosts a timeline.
    
    And we can wish and hope all we want, but a three month dev cycle just isn’t going to happen 🙂
    - filosofo 2:34 pm on July 10, 2010
      
      What’s killing us is testing coverage, not the lack of PHP5 features.
      
      I suspect the real harm is an invisible brain drain. Why would PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher programmers be eager to contribute code to a project that requires them to use a dead language, in particular a dead syntax?
      
      They already have an established interest in the project
      
      They don’t really know enough to care
      
      They have mercenary motivations
      
      Excluded are those who love to program, are new to WordPress, and know what they’re doing. It would be hard to prove we’ve lost too many of those kinds of people until it’s too late.
  - Xavier 12:12 pm on July 10, 2010
    
    Somehow, I know you’d burn me on the “3 months dev cycle” thing 🙂
  - Andrew Nacin 3:01 pm on July 10, 2010
    
    filosofo: Excellent points.
  - Brian Layman 6:49 pm on July 10, 2010
    
    If we decide on 3.2, I would recommend that we incorporate that knowledge the update-core.php. It could display an error message at the top & prevent upgrades to 3.2 or higher.
    While we are in there core_upgrade_preamble() could use another action call. It makes sense to have one up right where the announcements are echoed out.
  - Dion Hulse 1:17 am on July 11, 2010
    
    WordPress 3.0 already includes a PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher/MySQLMySQL MySQL is a relational database management system. A database is a structured collection of data where content, configuration and other options are stored. https://www.mysql.com/. version check before upgrades, I’m pretty certain that displays a warning and prevents updates if they dont match..
  - Brian Layman 2:16 am on July 11, 2010
    
    You, Sir, are correct. It’s built into list_core_update(). Good catch.
  - Matt 6:05 am on July 11, 2010
    
    I’m down for 3.2, or more generally whatever release is in Q1 of 2011.
    
    Should we bump to 5.3 as recommended?
  - Andrew Nacin 6:16 am on July 11, 2010
    
    I’m down for 3.2, or more generally whatever release is in Q1 of 2011.
    
    That’d be 3.1 then, which isn’t bad, and we can simply tell hosting companies Q1. I said 3.2 originally but I didn’t realize the stats were in our favor to do this sooner. This also prevents us from needing to do any major refactoring or feature development in 3.1 but still need to use PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher 4 syntax and constructs (lame duck). 3.org also gives us an additional cushion that allows us to aim for 3.1 — hosting companies will have a solid 6-7 months to make adjustments.
    
    Should we bump to 5.3 as recommended?
    
    More people are on 4.4 than 5.3, so the stats just don’t support that, unfortunately. The good thing is, the stats do solidly support a jump to 5.2.
    
    For everyone’s reference, here’s the stats for all WordPress 2.7+ installs:
    
    4.3 – 1.3%
    4.4 – 6.3%
    5.0 – 0.1%
    5.1 – 3.5%
    5.2 – 85.4%
    5.3 – 3.4%
  - Peter Westwood 9:54 am on July 11, 2010
    
    I wouldn’t be surprised if a large portion of the 5.3 installs are local development installs where people have control and tend to run the latest version of things.
    
    5.2 looks like the key winner here.
  - Alex M. 10:26 am on July 11, 2010
    
    +1 to 5.2
    
    5.3 deprecates a lot of stuff. We’re good with WordPress, but a lot of other scripts likely won’t be and I bet a lot of hosts are holding off as a result.
  - Dan Cole 4:05 pm on July 11, 2010
    
    What are the stats for 2.9+? I think we should only consider the people that are likely going to upgrade to the next version of WordPress. What would you do if you knew that 6% of installs would never upgrade from WordPress 2.7 and would never upgrade PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher from version 4.4… until their servers killed over. Is there any correlation between running an outdated version of PHP and an older version of WordPress?
  - Andrew Nacin 4:24 pm on July 11, 2010
    
    @Dan: I think it’s safe to assume that there is enough of a correlation to bring down the percentages a bit for older versions of PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher, though probably not much. Mark said he was waiting on that data. (“Little elves are running in a hamster wheel.”) We’ll make sure to have it for Thursday, though I think the 2.7+ data is plenty persuasive on its own.
  - Brian Layman 3:43 pm on July 12, 2010
    
    Does making the recommended php version 5.3 help move us toward to 6.0 compatibility?
    
    The Backwards Incompatible Changes list doesn’t look too bad over 5.2: http://us2.php.net/manual/en/migration53.incompatible.php
    
    And the E_DEPRECATED error level should help mitigate any issues that do arise: http://php.net/manual/en/migration53.deprecated.php
    
    The required version would be 5.2 right?
  - scribu 9:07 pm on July 12, 2010
    
    Oh… my… god. Finally, we have reached the mythical PHP4 < 10%.
    
    PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher 5.2 is the way to go.
  - Jacob Santos 9:23 pm on July 12, 2010
    
    PHP6.0 should not be considered at the moment as news suggests that the PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher developers might go in a new direction with regards to what PHP6.0 is. As of right now, I’d suggest you think of PHP5.3 as PHP6.0 until new details comes out.
  - Otto 9:57 pm on July 12, 2010
    
    5.3 has had some problems (5.3.1 had some serious issues that breaks things) and it really isn’t there yet on enough hosts for it to be a viable target. I say go for 5.2 compatibility, or just 5.0+ compatibility.
  - Keith Casey 2:00 am on July 13, 2010
    From the PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher perspective:
    
    5.2 is considered the nice, stable version and is 3+ years old now. It’s still under active development. This is an *excellent* minimum requirement.
    
    5.3 is considered the greatest thing evar(!) if you’re using a framework or working on Windows. For the rest of us, it has some cool features, but still *low* penetration. This is a reasonable *recommendation*.
    
    What was supposed to be 6.0 was moved to a branchbranch A directory in Subversion. WordPress uses branches to store the latest development code for each major release (3.9, 4.0, etc.). Branches are then updated with code for any minor releases of that branch. Sometimes, a major version of WordPress and its minor versions are collectively referred to as a "branch", such as "the 4.0 branch". and the whole approach is being re-evaluated. In my personal opinion, it looks like a lot of the motivation/drive behind it has died. Don’t touch it.
    
    All of that said, if you require 5.2 as a minimum, you should make sure it’s 5.3 compatible and doesn’t throw all kinds of E_Deprecated warnings. Some plugins are likely to misbehave if you leave any.
  - Alex M. 2:06 am on July 13, 2010
    
    @Keith: All my WordPress sites run PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher 5.3. It was a bit rough at first with all of the warnings, but they were resolved long ago. 🙂
  - Ramoonus 1:56 pm on July 16, 2010
    
    What are the numbers on PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher 5.2 and 5.3?
- Mark Jaquith 10:33 pm on July 12, 2010
  
  The stats for WP 2.9+ weren’t significantly different. 85.2% on 5.2, and 3.2% on 5.3. Regardless, I still feel strongly about targeting PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher 5.2 for our first 2011 release.
hakre 12:02 am on July 11, 2010

Did someone misread the haiku statement?
Keith Casey 12:12 am on July 12, 2010

From the more general PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher perspective.. going 5.3 only is *very* premature. Some of the major frameworks – name the Zend Framework, Symfony, and Lithium (build by some of the CakePHP team) – are or are going 5.3 by Q1 2011, but they target and reach a completely different segment than the average WordPress installation. My 0.02.
Brian Layman 3:21 pm on July 12, 2010

Suggested topic: Initial 3.org contact reports by the 6 team leads:
APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways. Reference. Andrew Nacin
Handbooks: Jane Wells
bbPressbbPress Free, open source software built on top of WordPress for easily creating forums on sites. https://bbpress.org.: John James Jacoby
PI: Support: Mark Jaquith
PI: Commmunity: Peter Westwood
PI: CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.: Ryan Boren
filosofo 4:02 pm on July 12, 2010

I don’t think we can require PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher 5.3 until it’s widely available in the popular Linux package repositories. Debian current stable, for example, has the PHP 5.2.x package.
- Brian Layman 4:11 pm on July 12, 2010
  
  I definitely agree, but I don’t think that is what was being discussed.
  
  Matt’s wording “Should we bump to 5.3 as recommended?” could be read either way but I think he is referring to this section of the codex:
  https://codex.wordpress.org/Hosting_WordPress#Recommended_setup
  
  We already recommend 5.2 today. This is a just a soft push forward. The required and recommended versions are not often identical.
  - filosofo 4:30 pm on July 12, 2010
    
    You’re right. Sleep deprivation had me reading “recommended” as “required.”
  - filosofo 4:31 pm on July 12, 2010
    
    Either that or I’m just so giddy about being able to kick PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher 4 into the rubbish heap.
  - Brian Layman 4:39 pm on July 12, 2010
    
    Yeah, there are new functions like json_decode that sound really neat, but I’m not sure all this new fangled “jason” stuff 5.0 gives us will ever catch on. SERIALIZATION FTW! 😉
  - Matt 5:10 pm on July 12, 2010
    
    Yes, it’s recommended. Since we’re going to make a big push around hosts, it would be worth getting them on something we’re comfortable with for 3-4 years down the road.
  - Dougal 3:25 pm on July 14, 2010
    
    I’ve always wondered about the stats we see from hosted users. Are there really a lot of hosts that *only* offer PHP4? Or are there a lot of hosts that have both available, but default to PHP4, or users who came on board with PHP4 and don’t know/care that PHP5 is an available upgrade?
    
    I suspect the latter, but have no evidence.
Pingback: WordPress drops PHP 4 in Q1 2011 | hakre on wordpress
Andy Skelton 5:04 am on July 15, 2010

Suggested topic: bot@im.wordpress.org What do you want to subscribe to?
Pingback: Chossing a good minimum PHP version
demetris 10:19 am on July 15, 2010

Set up team to evaluate shared-hosting providers for WP.org recommendations.

TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. of the proposal: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/14087

This is also tangentially connected to the PHP4 EOL discussion.

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