| Status | Date Approved | Obsoleted by | Updated by | Obsoletes | Author(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
APPROVED |
2019-05-27 |
None |
None |
None |
Ryan Parman (@skyzyx) |
This document is made available under the terms of the LICENSE of this repository. The author wishes this document to be copyright-free and part of the public domain.
SimplePie (and its related first- and second-party software) is provided by its authors under the terms of a liberal software license. It is also the desire of the authors to remain "good citizens" of the internet and PHP communities, which includes discouraging the continued use of unmaintained, end-of-life (EOL) software platforms.
Since 2011, PHP releases are on an annual cadence where new major versions of PHP are released — and old versions achieve EOL status — every November/December. This means that every November we will be dropping support for the oldest-supported version of PHP and adopting support for the new version of PHP.
Any future changes to the standard PHP release schedule will be adopted by the SimplePie Core Team. This may include extended support for a particular version of PHP (like we saw with PHP 5.6).
Due to this rationale, the high-level PHP support guidelines for SimplePie (and its related first- and second-party software) are as follows:
- The latest bugfix releases
- …of all non-EOL versions of PHP
- …whereas "active support" versions are expected to receive parity support
- …and whereas "security support" versions are expected to not receive backwards-incompatible changes, but may not gain access to new features that require newer language features
- …not older than PHP 7.2
As an example of how the schedule is expected to work, the two most recent major.minor versions of PHP receive full parity support for new features. The third most recent will see feature-parity on a best effort basis.
In the following table, the Year refers to November/December of that year. Based on PHP Supported Versions:
| Year | Active Support | Security Support | EOL |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 7.3, 7.2 | N/A | N/A |
| 2019 | 7.4, 7.3 | 7.2 | N/A |
| 2020 | 8.0, 7.4 | 7.3 | 7.2 |
| 2021 | 8.1, 8.0 | 7.4 | 7.3, 7.2 |
| 2022 | 8.2, 8.1 | 8.0 | 7.4, 7.3, 7.2 |
Even when a major.minor version of PHP is listed as supported, only the latest bugfix/patch release of that branch is actually supported.
NOTE: This (intentionally) pre-supposes that developers have control over the software versions that they are running. "Shared hosting plans" are explicitly unsupported by default because we support particular combinations of software versions.
To use a fictional version, let's say that v6.0 is listed as being supported. A user is running v6.0.0, while v6.0.1 is available. There is a bugfix that exists in v6.0.1 that does not exist in v6.0.0. Instead of applying a patch to fix the issue in v6.0.0, you may be asked to upgrade your version to v6.0.1 where the bug is already fixed.
No, we're not going to intentionally break our users. We want to develop and deliver quality software. At the same time, we do not have the resources to maintain support for an unwieldly matrix of software versions, stacks, extensions, and platforms. This document is intended to both protect the development team, as well as set expectations for our users about how we think about PHP support moving forward.