PHP 8.2 Support

Support
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1

With PHP 8.0 about to each EOL status and PHP 8.1 about to lose active support, I’m wondering what the plan is for supporting PHP 8.2 (and after it is released, PHP 8.3)?

1 Like
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Hi,

We currently have no immediate plans to add support for other PHP versions.

4

May I ask why this is the case?

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There are a few reasons, such as, but not limited to:

  1. Not widely requested / used as compared to some other features
  2. Other priorities and bug fixes that require more attention and resources
  3. Simply hasn’t gone through any product planning process at the moment

Is this very important for your use case?

6

PHP requirements these days are being increased at a rapid pace! We really need PHP 8.2 and up support.

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@hrishikesh Now that PHP 8.3 has been officially released, I’m hoping that Netlify will consider revisiting supporting PHP 8.2 (and ideally, PHP 8.3). As of last week, PHP 8.1 no longer will receive bug fixes and in another year, it will stop receiving security fixes.

Keeping up with the latest version of PHP (or in this case, even the prior version) is incredibly important for security purposes. Additionally, it may become difficult to continue running PHP 8.1 in local development environments soon. To that point, Homebrew has deprecated PHP 8.0 and will soon do the same with PHP 8.1.

Since it seems like the product planning process for PHP 8.2 support might take awhile, I’d love to see this get started sooner rather than later. If Netlify has no plans to support PHP 8.2, I fear that people may be forced to look elsewhere (myself included).

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I have asked again about the latest stance on this issue, will update once we know more.

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Happy New Year. Now that we’re in 2024 I was hoping to get a status update here. We’re now less than a year away from PHP 8.1 no longer receiving security fixes, as well as the release of PHP 8.4.

I’d also like to ask that Netlify be public about their plans in the PHP space. If they don’t feel it’s worth supporting past 8.1, that’s fine - but I think the community would appreciate knowing that for certain.

If it helps to show that it’s more than just me who cares, someone on Twitter recently tagged me in this post: https://x.com/simonhamp/status/1741625727806554589?s=20

Thanks in advance.

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8.3 is coming. The relevant PR and docs updates are ready, so this should be available soon.

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This is wonderful news! Thank you for listening to me and the community - it is really appreciated.

Some followup Q’s:

  1. Any idea on a timeline for this release?
  2. If you need some beta testers, I’m happy to help - just reach out.
  3. Will PHP 8.2 be made available in addition to PHP 8.3? While I’m a huge advocate for staying on the latest version, this isn’t always possible due to external factors (package requirements, etc).
  4. Does Netlify plan to continue to make timely PHP releases in the future, as PHP 8.4 (and others) are released?
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Thanks for your support.

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Btw, what about 8.3?

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  • The release should be landing in a week or two.
  • There won’t be any beta testing required, it’s a fairly non-destructuve upgrade.
  • PHP 8.2 still remains along with any other documented PHP versions
  • Can’t promise about any further updates just yet. We’re not against updating, but we’re against the problems that are brought along with the updates. Just like you mentioned, when we add a new version, we can’t simply remove the old one. A lot of users might be still depending on that. So with each new version, we’re adding dependency bloat to our build image which increases its size and increases the time to boot - making builds slower for all. The proposed solution is to migrate to something like asdf where users can specify any valid version they want to use and we can download it during initializing phase. However, that’s a big task to undertake while not breaking anything current. It had even kicked off in the past, but due to some other priorities that came up, it got sidetracked and has not been picked-up again.
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Thanks for the update, I appreciate it.

I just checked and the Netlify docs now indicate that PHP 8.2 and 8.3 are both supported. I was able to confirm that both work in my build process as well. Could you confirm this is the official release?

Finally, I totally understand about the issues with continuing to support older versions of PHP while also supporting newer versions. I wonder if phasing out older versions of PHP along with the release of a new build image centered around Ubuntu version 22.04 is in the cards? Netlify did a similar thing (phasing out versions of PHP prior to 7.4) when the Ubuntu 20.04 build image was released.

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Yes, PHP 8.3 is now available. Regarding phasing out, it’s definitely possible and we would like to consider that, but:

  • We have no immediate plans to upgrade to Ubuntu 22.04
  • Deprecating the old version without a build image change would require a lot of work: Analysing who’s currently using it, reaching out to them, helping them upgrade, maintain several posts and updates, do the actual work, etc. This would require a separate project in itself, which is why it’s not an immediate option. It will eventually be gone, jut not sure when exactly.
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Thanks for all of your help @hrishikesh, I appreciate it.