[arch-dev-public] Upcoming PHP 8.1 update

[Kristian Klausen]

On Sat, Jan 22, 2022 at 20:45:45 +0100, Pierre Schmitz via arch-dev-public wrote:
> Hi David,
> 
> sorry about the hassle. I did not expect much issues here. I would
> consider this one of the smoother PHP updates. Unless people ignored
> warnings by previous PHP versions. I guess that is what mostly happend
> here. PHP 8 gets more and more strict each version.
> 
> After reading the issues on Nextcloud's Github repository I guess we
> can conclude that they will probably lack behind at least one PHP
> minor version. This is quite incompatible with the Arch way.
> 
> Anyway, let's talk about some options to solve such issues:
> 
> 1) Let's no longer package software that requires older versions of
> PHP. Personally I would run such complex software with very specific
> needs in a Docker container. E.g. Nextcloud even provides an official
> one.

FYI:
As stated earlier by Jelle[1], our bugtracker isn't currently compatible 
with PHP8. In case PHP7 is dropped from the repos and no one steps up 
fixing the flyspray code[1]. The DevOps team will likely just run the 
the bugtracker in a container of some sort.

[1] https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2021-December/030571.html
[2] https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/flyspray/

- Kristian

> 2) Keep trying to patch upstream packages to keep them working.
> 3) We provide two sets of PHP packages: "php" would always be the
> latest stable version and be released no matter what. In addition to
> this there would be e.g. "php-legacy" packages providing the oldest
> supported version, currently 7.4. This would be updated to 8.0 in
> November when 7 is EOL and php-8.2 get's released. The difference to
> the currently available php7 package will be the lack of a version
> number in package and binary names. So both packages will be a moving
> target, but always two versions apart.
> 
> I would give option 3 a try. I'd like to get rid of versioned
> constraints then and reduce the amount of third party modules. While
> we would end up with more packages we need less testing and will be
> able to move faster.
> 
> *) https://www.php.net/supported-versions.php
> 
> On Sat, Jan 22, 2022 at 10:57 AM David Runge <dave at sleepmap.de> wrote:
> >
> > On 2022-01-21 17:51:17 (+0100), Pierre Schmitz via arch-dev-public wrote:
> > > I just released PHP 8.1 into [extra].
> > >
> > > Please also check https://archlinux.org/todo/php-7-retiredment/ so PHP
> > > 7 can be dropped soon.
> > >
> > > have a nice weekend,
> >
> > Unfortunately, it likely won't be ;_;
> >
> > https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/73452
> >
> > Another reminder for users to *please* join the Testing Team [1] and
> > help test our packages!
> >
> > Best,
> > David
> >
> > [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_Testing_Team
> >
> > --
> > https://sleepmap.de
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Pierre Schmitz, https://pierre-schmitz.com