Why are you running an EOL version of PHP?

[djbaxter]

Agreed. 7.4.16 is not even close to EOL and right now Xenforo and WordPress are both purring along nicely for me with Apache 2.4, PHP-FPM, and Maria DB 10.3.28. I'm in no rush to leap into PHP 8.0 at this point. I haven't even really explored the benefits and I won't until all the addons and WordPress plugins I use are certified PHP8-compatible. Why fix what isn't broke?

But I sympathize fully with Xenforo's desire to stop supporting EOL versions. I imagine there's a lot of unnecessary code required to make everything backward compatible by now. Total PITA.

I think at some point Xenforo will need to do what WordPress did and simply announce or proclaim that they will no longer support PHP 5.6. That's probably what it will take to get some people off their butts to upgrade. And once the 5.6 guys have upgraded, move on to the next levels: 7.0, 7.2, 7.2, and 7.3 in increments as new versions are released.

 

[duderuud]

Upgrading to PHP 8 gives me a blank page.
I think it is not an XF problem, but most add-ons I think.

Rebuild master data will probably fix that. And if you are running redis, a flush of the redis db may help.

 

[MisakiTaro]

PHP 8 is a real lifesaver, 2x faster than 7.4. Everyone should give a try.

 

[djbaxter]

PHP 8 is a real lifesaver, 2x faster than 7.4. Everyone should give a try.

Not if you're using addons that aren't compatible with PHP8 and it breaks your customized forum.

 

[Kier]

simply announce or proclaim that they will no longer support PHP 5.6

For what it's worth, we already dropped support for PHP 5.6 with XenForo 2.2.

Also, for the avoidance of doubt, we're not expecting everyone to run off and install PHP 8 immediately, this is more of a question of what is holding people back from upgrading from EOL versions.

 

[Slavik]

And once the 5.6 guys have upgraded, move on to the next levels: 7.0, 7.2, 7.2, and 7.3 in increments as new versions are released.

Swapping up the 7.x branch is pretty much painless now for 99% of hosts. Theres very little reason not to be running 7.4+

 

[imno007]

IPB has a minimum PHP 7.2 requirement now, so probably no reason XF couldn't get away with at least that min. too.

 

[briansol]

As I just updated, motion to add a new poll option "I already upgraded"

 

[inzanty]

Now i'm running on PHP 8.0.5 but there no sense to running on PHP 7.0-7.2 because it's unsupported.
I hope that in future, may be in 2.2.6 XenForo Developers will drop 7.0-7.2 and set 7.3 minimum.

I know few legacy projects and even there PHP minimum 7.1.

 

[Mr Lucky]

I don't quite understand the poll. Maybe it would have beetter to mask why running an EOL version (and giving examples)

I'm usin 7.4 and like a lot of people even the xf itslef decares compatibilty with 8, I just don't know about the addons 15 or so addons I'm using.. It would be nice if addons pages listed the compatible php along with the xenfor version, otherwise we are just in trial and error territory and may not discover an issue immediately until some very disgrunteled member points out a problem.

I tend to think it's best to stay one or two versions behind the current.

 

[Mr Lucky]

Maybe it would have beetter to mask why running an EOL version

Oops my mistake, it does ask that! I must have misconstrued.

 

[Max Taxable]

Oops my mistake, it does ask that! I must have misconstrued.

Title got changed.

 

[Alpha1]

Option 5: Other.
I run php 7.3 because I can't go higher with XF1.

 

[Slavik]

I can't go higher with XF1.

 

[MySiteGuy]

An unfortunate reality I experience with many clients is about half of them don't seem to update anything, so their running older PHP versions come as no surprise.

 

[PaulB]

I run php 7.3 because I can't go higher with XF1.

You can if you're willing to tinker a bit. I'm on 8.0 with XF1.

 

[PaulB]

Why fix what isn't broke?

Later minor versions of PHP 7 (non-EOL) bring much-improved type safety and error handling, and PHP 8 takes that a step further. Those translate directly to improved security and fewer vulnerabilities, since more can be caught during development with the help of static analysis. As it stands, the XenForo codebase can't benefit from many of those improvements because it's stuck supporting PHP 7.0.

Almost all code has bugs, and some of those bugs are going to be undiscovered security vulnerabilities. Newer PHP versions make it easier to catch those during development. PHP 8.0 in particular is a huge step forward in terms of security.

 

[Alpha1]

Yup, that pretty much covers how I feel about it. I will be so glad once I am able to upgrade my site with the essential addon functionality to XF.

 

[djbaxter]

I may take the plunge with PHP8 on one of my servers this weekend (or one small forum on that server) and see what breaks and what doesn't. Increased security and increased speed is an offer that's hard to turn down.

 

[briansol]

on 8.0.5 for a day now (since 1700), no noticeable increases in speed.
even enabled the JIT settings
server load is up significantly.
no imagick support