Official Goodbye to PHP4!

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The Phoenix
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Official Goodbye to PHP4!

Post by The Phoenix »

http://derickrethans.nl/php_est_mort_vive_php.php / http://www.php.net/index.php#2007-07-13-1
[13-Jul-2007]

Today it is exactly three years ago since PHP 5 has been released. In those three years it has seen many improvements over PHP 4. PHP 5 is fast, stable & production-ready and as PHP 6 is on the way, PHP 4 will be discontinued.

The PHP development team hereby announces that support for PHP 4 will continue until the end of this year only. After 2007-12-31 there will be no more releases of PHP 4.4. We will continue to make critical security fixes available on a case-by-case basis until 2008-08-08. Please use the rest of this year to make your application suitable to run on PHP 5.

For documentation on migration for PHP 4 to PHP 5, we would like to point you to our migration guide. There is additional information available in the PHP 5.0 to PHP 5.1 and PHP 5.1 to PHP 5.2 migration guides as well.
So, now is everyone ready to join the GoPHP5 movement?
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Jenk
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Post by Jenk »

Only about 3 years too late, but hey. Better late than never.
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Chris Corbyn
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Post by Chris Corbyn »

Woohoo! :) I wondered how long it would be before we got here.
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Oren
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Post by Oren »

What took them 3 years?
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RobertGonzalez
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Post by RobertGonzalez »

Finally. Yes, it has been a long road to this point, but this is exciting news.
nickvd
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Post by nickvd »

Has hell frozen over?
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AKA Panama Jack
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Post by AKA Panama Jack »

Let's see no support after the end of the year...

...means absolutely no real change in how many servers are going to continue to run PHP 4.

There isn't a big enough difference in speed between PHP 5 and PHP 4 to make any current hosts switch. It will be years before PHP 4 is dropped by most hosts in favor of PHP 5 or PHP 6. There really isn't any big incentive to switch like there was between PHP 3 and PHP 4.
alex.barylski
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Post by alex.barylski »

I beg to differ... :P

As more software is developed to support only PHP5 more hosts will have to switch. I fail to see the reasons behind anyone not wanting to switch. Will PHP5 not handle legacy code, if so, whats the big deal? I often work on my works scripts under PHP5 and their minimum is 4.3.1
Arawn
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Post by Arawn »

If there's major security fixes out to 8/8/08, I don't PHP4 going away for at least another year on shared hosting. :(
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The Phoenix
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Post by The Phoenix »

Arawn wrote:If there's major security fixes out to 8/8/08, I don't PHP4 going away for at least another year on shared hosting. :(
There are generally four tiers to installs of php:

1. Shared hosting: Shared hosting is primarily reliant upon distributions, and control panels. The major distribution holding up the show is Redhat Enterprise Linux, which will switch to PHP5 in their next release. The control panels are dependent on phpmyadmin, which has committed to the GoPHP5 movement, so that will likely lead to mass upgrades.

2. Developers: Developers are overwhelmingly pushing toward PHP5, and most first-adopters will be driving hosts to offer it.

3. Dedicated hosting: Most people willing to pay the costs for dedicated hosting are developers, or leading-edge companies - i.e., likely to be pushing for php5.

4. Corporations: Traditionally risk averse, they won't be moving to php5 anytime soon. They are the very long end of the tail. Expect corporate sites running php to be the very last sites to migrate.

It won't happen overnight by any stretch. But it will occur rapidly over the next year. When php3 stopped security support, it was only a few months before the majority of hosts switched. Plus, PHP4 didn't offer built-in acceleration (for free!), better performance (in 5.2), better timezone support, and full unicode support.

Its a compelling package, far more than 3 v. 4 was, and most hosts won't run php without security updates.
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AKA Panama Jack
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Post by AKA Panama Jack »

The Phoenix wrote:Its a compelling package, far more than 3 v. 4 was, and most hosts won't run php without security updates.
You would be surprised. :)
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RobertGonzalez
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Post by RobertGonzalez »

The Phoenix wrote:3. Dedicated hosting: Most people willing to pay the costs for dedicated hosting are developers, or leading-edge companies - i.e., likely to be pushing for php5.

4. Corporations: Traditionally risk averse, they won't be moving to php5 anytime soon. They are the very long end of the tail. Expect corporate sites running php to be the very last sites to migrate.
3. I pay about the same for my current DS running FC5 with Apache2/MySQL5/PHP5 as I would for another server running a lower version of the software. I had to seek it out, but I am glad I did.

4. The company I work, while not a technology comany, has committed to progressive adoption of new technologies. One of the first things I did when I came on board was to make PHP5 and MySQL 5 a standard on Linux servers running Apache for all things web. We adopted, but it was because there was someone pushing it (me). I think that if enough people have enough knowledge of the reasons to move forward with new technology and present it in an understandable way to the Directors/VP/Decision makers of a company, it can be adopted quickly.
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Chris Corbyn
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Post by Chris Corbyn »

I agree that since phpMyAdmin are following the Go PHP 5 movement, hosts will be hard pushed to stick with PHP4. Most hosting control panels include phpMyAdmin and a massive number of PHP users depend on it.

What we really need to see, is CPanel making the switch themselves because whatever CPanel provides is what the majority of shared hosting companies will go with.
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RobertGonzalez
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Post by RobertGonzalez »

And last I checked CPanel still does not play well with MySQL5. It does with PHP5, but not MySQL5, which is another big player in the hosted server arena.
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Jenk
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Post by Jenk »

If the developers pushed for php5 from the hosts, you'd see much more php5. To simply sit back and say "They won't upgrade to php5" is lazy. Demand php5, or go elsewhere to someone who does php5. If it is your client/employer who has the authority, make it a strong suggestion and don't back down. Manage your managers/customers.
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