[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #57345: Bump the minimum required PHP version to 7.2

[WordPress Trac]

#57345: Bump the minimum required PHP version to 7.2
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 Reporter:  SergeyBiryukov                       |       Owner:  (none)
     Type:  task (blessed)                       |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal                               |   Milestone:  Future
                                                 |  Release
Component:  General                              |     Version:
 Severity:  normal                               |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  has-patch has-unit-tests 2nd-        |     Focuses:
  opinion                                        |
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Comment (by SergeyBiryukov):

 Replying to [comment:29 azaozz]:
 > > Per discussion with @azaozz, this means we can bump the minimum
 required PHP version
 >
 > Yep, we talked about bumping it (about a month ago?) but don't think all
 the conditions are met yet.

 Ah sorry, it looks like my understanding of these conditions was incorrect
 or incomplete :) I was excited to see 5.6 finally drop below 5%, should
 have checked with you first. Thanks for the clarifications!

 > 1. The number of sites that will be "left behind" (on less than the new
 min version) have to be less than 5%, not 5% per PHP version. Currently
 that number is about 8.5% if excluding old WP sites that are on even older
 PHP versions.

 That was indeed not quite clear to me, as previously noted in
 comment:143:ticket:33381. I think part of the confusion was that it does
 not seem to match what happened with the previous version bump.

 The [https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/12/08/updating-the-minimum-php-
 version/ proposal post for bumping the minimum to PHP 5.6] mentions that
 for sites running WordPress 5.0, 85% were using PHP 5.6 or above at the
 time (9 Dec 2018). If we remove the version limit as suggested in the
 comments on #51043 and here, the usage of PHP < 5.6 across all WordPress
 sites on that date was almost 25%:

 ||PHP 5.2||PHP 5.3||PHP 5.4||PHP 5.5||Total||
 ||2.30%||5.98%||10.20%||6.41%||24.90%||

 By the time the actual bump was committed in [45058] / #46594 (29 Mar
 2019), the stats have changed a bit, though the usage of unsupported
 versions was still more than 20%:

 ||PHP 5.2||PHP 5.3||PHP 5.4||PHP 5.5||Total||
 ||1.97%||4.96%||8.60%||4.97%||20.50%||

 That said, if the consensus is that the previous bump was premature,
 waiting until PHP < 7.2 (5.6, 7.0, and 7.1 combined) are less than 5%
 seems like the correct thing to do.

 > 2. Even if the above number was at 5% or below, 6.2 is far too soon to
 bump the minimum PHP version. What usually happens when WordPress
 announces PHP version bump is that hosting companies start to move WP
 sites to newer PHP versions. However that takes time. So these
 announcements should be made well ahead of the cut-off date.

 Looking at the previous post again, it was published in December with the
 proposed cut-off date in April. My thinking was that 6.2 would likely be
 released in April or May, which should give us a few months, same as last
 time. Based on this discussion though, it looks like more time is needed.

 Either way, I appreciate the explanations, and it's great to have more
 clarity on the conditions. Thanks again!

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/57345#comment:33>
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