PHP 8.4 support (bump minimum PHP version?)

[alecpl]

I've enabled testing on PHP 8.4 and there are some issues with --prefer-lowest run. That means we'll have to bump minimum supported PHP version or wait for the issues to be fixed (they might not be fixable, though).

I've created some upstream tickets:

• PHP 8.4 issue with guzzlehttp/promises dependency guzzle/guzzle#3248
• PHP 8.4 support for v2.0 Bacon/BaconQrCode#183
• PHP 8.4 deprecation warning nikic/PHP-Parser#1017

As we remove require-dev section in packaging, we may have more luck with PHP7 support for production releases.

ps. I also run tests for 8.4 using 8.1 as a platform to workaround other issues.

[pabzm]

You changed code directly on the "master" branch, which makes the "unit" tests fail, which blocks proper pull requests. Please fix that.

[alecpl]

I bumped PHP requirement to 8.1. Also bumped bacon-qr-code to v3. So, all issues should be solved and now we can have PHP 8.4 support, I suppose.

[pabzm]

PHP v8.1 is going to have its end of life at the end of 2025 already. Why not go for v8.2 directly? Are there technical reasons?

Even the current Debian "stable" release contains php v8.2, and that's usually one of the most conservative platforms, I'd say.

[alecpl]

I choose it according to what many of our dependencies require. I.e. it's the lowest we can go, I think, to get 8.4 support at the same time.

End of life is not an argument. What Linux distros provide by default might be, but I did not really investigate that. I think AlmaLinux 9 comes with PHP 8.1.

[pabzm]

Thank you for the explanation!

[JulianAtkins]

I have lots of enterprise Linux distros installed for my pipeline, so a quick Ansible command returns the following data about available PHP versions, maybe this list will be helpful.

The strange thing, is the disappearance of PHP 8.1 from all "8" distros, but its there for all "9" distros, I don't know why. For example, AlmaLinux 8 has PHP 8.0 and jumps directly to PHP 8.2, while AlmaLinux 9 has 8.1 and 8.2.

Fedora Server 40

Name
php 8.3.16-1.fc40

Fedora Server 41

Name
php 8.3.16-1.fc41

AlmaLinux 8

Name Stream
php 7.2
php 7.3
php 7.4
php 8.0
php 8.2

AlmaLinux 9

Name Stream
php 8.1
php 8.2

Oracle Linux 8

Name Stream
php 7.2
php 7.3
php 7.4
php 8.0
php 8.2

Oracle Linux 9

Name Stream
php 8.1
php 8.2

Rocky Linux 8

Name Stream
php 7.2
php 7.3
php 7.4
php 8.0
php 8.2

Rocky Linux 9

Name Stream
php 8.1
php 8.2