[arch-dev-public] Upcoming PHP 8.1 update

[Pierre Schmitz]

Thanks for the feedback. I'll do some more research (and also check
some of my own apps). So far it does not seem that bad and most things
work when disabling deprecation warnings and ignore dependency on the
exact minor version of PHP.

MediaWiki works fine with PHP 8.0 (I haven't check 8.1 yet). I am also
preparing an update to 1.37. I don't think the remaining issues
regarding Elasticsearch affect us.

Flyspray (our Bug-Tracker) seems to be compatible with PHP 8.0
(according to its composer.json). So there is a chance it will work
with 8.1 as well.

In general we could provide PHP 7 till its end of life in about eleven
months. But I don't think its worth providing several different minor
versions at the same time. This is not how semver is supposed to work
:-) (Someone should check Nextcloud but looking at their PR it mostly
seems about tests, documentation and deprecations but no hard errors).

Greetings,

Pierre

On Mon, Dec 6, 2021 at 6:13 PM David Runge via arch-dev-public
<arch-dev-public at lists.archlinux.org> wrote:
>
> On 2021-12-06 17:58:57 (+0100), Levente Polyak via arch-dev-public wrote:
> > On 12/6/21 17:48, David Runge via arch-dev-public wrote:
> > > On 2021-12-06 16:11:45 (+0100), Pierre Schmitz via arch-dev-public wrote:
> > > > Hi all,
> > > >
> > > > a little heads up as it takes longer than expected. I'll start the PHP
> > > > 8.1 update and the required rebuilds soon. I noticed some unexpected
> > > > incompatibilities and I'd like to look into these first. I'll also
> > > > evaluate if we could drop the php7 packages at the same time.
> > >
> > > Hi Pierre,
> > >
> > > nextcloud does not yet support php > 8.0.
> > > The upcoming version 23.0.0 (currently in [community-testing]) neither
> > > unfortunately [1].
> > >
> > > However, the package itself guards against upgrading to php 8.1, so it
> > > should be fine for current installations, but it will make installing
> > > nextcloud not possible for new systems.
> >
> >
> > That guard is just a stop gap from breaking the application after an
> > upgrade. That does not really help current installations either as it cuts
> > off the system from potentially important security updates.
>
> I agree. I was referring to right out breaking functionality on a
> running system due to the php upgrade.
>
> > We really need to keep the dependency resolution intact which means if we
> > are stuck for nextcloud the only viable options were either postpone php or
> > provide a maintained set of php 8.0 that nextcloud can depend on.
>
> We indeed need to make an effort in regards to these situations.
> It has happened before that nextcloud was not yet ready for a minor
> version upgrade of php and the upgrade broke functionality for users.
> That's why we have made the effort to signal the upper boundaries for
> the applications as clearly as possible (to not be in this situation
> anymore).
>
> My suggestion would be to wait for a little bit more to figure out
> whether there will be patch level releases for php 8.0.x or whether we
> should introduce another intermediary package (I'm not a fan of the
> latter).
>
> Best,
> David
>
> --
> https://sleepmap.de



-- 
Pierre Schmitz, https://pierre-schmitz.com