PHP Versions

anjanesh

I currently am on PHP 7.3.12 which is fine for now.
Wondering how do we update to say PHP 7.4.2 or later when it releases ?
Automatic or manual ?

sean

Opalstack is a managed service, so we manage the OS including system packages like PHP.

We'll update PHP and other packages when newer versions become available in the OS package repositories.

If you want to run a newer (or older) version of PHP, then you'll need to build that version of PHP from source yourself, along with a backend web server to serve it for you.

enzy

sean We'll update PHP and other packages when newer versions become available in the OS package repositories.

Great to hear that! If I may I would suggest some sort of an announcement about major updates like these, as it has potential to break things.

adam_w

Do you have a way to let us lock in which version of PHP we're using, to prevent potential backward compatibility issues? For instance, if I want my application to stay on 7.3.x when 7.4.x is pushed, is there a directive to do that?

sean

adam_w if we ever get to a point where we're managing multiple PHP versions server-wide then we'll have (at the very least) some form of SetHandler that you'll be able to drop into your .htaccess to set the version.

That said, we don't plan to keep supporting software that is past its EOL. So, for example, when PHP 7.3 hits its EOL at the end of 2021 we'll probably drop support for it.

sean

enzy of course! Potential changes like that will be come with ample notice, hopefully at least a couple of months.

anjanesh

PHP 7.4 has arrow functions like JavaScript which is very useful.

MrMartian

I second @enzy --- at the moment the "Wordpress Site Health Monitor" goes <Update your PHP to the current version, 7.4> or something similar.

It would be good to have a "Present version / planned update (datetime)" widget on our Opalstack dashboard, with a list of essentials (MariaDB/ Python/ PHP/ ... versions)? The various sites I have hosted in various places are PHP 7.4.6, 7.3.16 (at Opalstack), 3.3.18, 7.3.19, and 7.3.3 (Grr).

anjanesh

Tomorrow, PHP 8 Alpha 1 will be released : https://wiki.php.net/todo/php80#php_80_preparation_tasks
I hope by Nov end, OpalStack will have the option for us to use PHP 8.0.

klynton

PHP 7.4 and PHP 8 (alpha) are now available!

See Sean's post for more: https://community.opalstack.com/d/80-august-updates

anjanesh

PHP 8.0.0 released today. YaY !

bici

anjanesh does this mean that i can start using PHP 8 ? i want to test a Textpattern CMS installation on version 8. is it now the default version or do i need to specify it in some manner?

sean

bici it's not the default but you can switch your app over to PHP8 via the dashboard and use it.

We've got the official release rolled out already:

$ php80 -version
PHP 8.0.0 (cli) (built: Nov 24 2020 17:04:03) ( NTS gcc x86_64 )
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