While doing some internal management processes on how to handle updates and server migrations with our customers we stumbled upon the issue that we might at some time have TYPO3 versions that are in ELTS state and that we cannot provide with a suitable PHP version. And this is happening fast:
TYPO3 7.6 EOL for ELTS is December 21st 2021, PHP 7.2 is November 30th 2020, so one year without any proper PHP support
TYPO3 8.7 EOL for ELTS is March 31st 2023, PHP 7.2 is November 30th 2020, so almost 3 years without any proper PHP support
As my colleagues pointed out, since ELTS is a bought product, this should be available but according to the public release plan this is not inteded at all (even for TYPO3 8.7 which will outlive PHP 7.2 in public LTS). So that’s cool for us, since we pay for ELTS where needed, but the concern was raised regarding 8.7 since there seems to be no plan on making it compatible with PHP 7.3.
IMHO PHP 7.3 support for TYPO3 7 could (and should) be reserverd for the paying customers, since they will out the need and in the end they are the ones paying for it.
But what about the thousands of TYPO3 8 systems out there that can’t or won’t update to TYPO3 9 for some reason or another and who might not work anymore because some reckless hoster decides that they have to use PHP 7.3? (they do exist and they are mostly right to remove old PHP versions if they’re EOL)
What do you think?
PS: I put this here since it is the core we are talking about.
thanks for raising the question, as for the community-supported product TYPO3 LTS (not ELTS), I strive to support younger PHP versions as much as possible.
AFAIK TYPO3 v8 already works on PHP 7.3 since December 2018. If there are open tickets to ensure that TYPO3 v8 does not work with PHP 7.3, let me know and we will fix it.
However, in the TYPO3 projects I do with TYPO3 v8 and PHP 7.2 already, I found that the biggest issue is the support for third-party extensions, that are not compatible with PHP 7.3, so this question does not only touch the core.
For core, we can only estimate if we’re able to “forward-support” PHP 7.4 for TYPO3 v8 as well, however I have not tested it yet tbh.
Can you point me to the places where there are issues in TYPO3 v8 (Core) and PHP 7.3?
I guess I also mixed up things regarding ELTS, I’m pretty sure TYPO3 GmbH already has PHP 7.3 support for TYPO3 v7.6 ELTS, but that’s probably a separate topic.
We do indeed have a project working with TYPO3 8 on PHP 7.3 that works without any trouble, we were more concerned about the “official” part of the support, since the roadmap doesn’t explicitly tell so (but I guess this is due to not yet existing tests for TYPO3 8 with PHP 7.3?). Frankly the only incompatibility that I would see to be an issue of some sort is the change of the way the Reflector class returns integers and booleans but I’m not deep enough in the core and extbase to know if this is really a concern.
As you pointed out, 7.6 is in ELTS mode and therefore is something for a completely different topic.
Also the foreward support of third party extensions might be a real concern but looking through PHP 7.3 incompatible changes I don’t think that any of the major extensions used by the community are affected.
My take out of this is that we can sleep well when using TYPO3 8 with PHP 7.3 and we’ll look out for any bugs related to PHP and report any bugs.
