[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #52654: Check and recommend intl extension in Site Health

[WordPress Trac]

#52654: Check and recommend intl extension in Site Health
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 Reporter:  zodiac1978    |      Owner:  (none)
     Type:  defect (bug)  |     Status:  new
 Priority:  normal        |  Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  Site Health   |    Version:
 Severity:  normal        |   Keywords:
  Focuses:                |
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 First reported here: https://github.com/WordPress/health-check/issues/333


 I suggest to check for the existence of the intl PHP extension with the
 status of a recommendation.

 This extension is necessary to use the Normalizer function which would
 solve many problems with internationalization issues for special
 characters:
 https://www.php.net/manual/en/intl.requirements.php

 Unfortunately this extension is not included per default on every
 PHP/hoster.

 Related issues: #30130, #35951, #24661, #47763

 Additional info from the Github issue:
 > intl has hard dependency on icu system libraries, which will consume
 over 30 Mb diskspace on smaller (VPS/embedded) systems. Each loaded
 library claims some memory and initialization time overhead.

 > Bigger distributions can link libicu to libxml2 library and therefore it
 can be loaded by libxml2 linked extensions, but this dependency is
 optional

 The site health check for this extension could be easily added like shown
 here:
 https://gist.github.com/Zodiac1978/ce9db99becd3507ec8d8207c583e947b

 This was discussed in the hosting team with some additional comments:
 https://make.wordpress.org/hosting/?s=%22intl+extension%22

 Especially this feedback from @swissspidy is interesting:
 > in the case of the INTL extension, when a server is running PHP 7.2 but
 uses a super outdated version of the extension which doesn’t include the
 functions and constants one would expect. So any site health check for
 extensions should also check against these things.

 Therefore there are two ways to check here. We could check for the
 extension itself or we could check for the function(s) we need in core,
 like the Normalize function which could help resolve the bug tickets
 mentioned above.

 I would recommend the latter.

 Any input on how to get forward here from the Hosting team and the Site
 Health people is much appreciated!

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/52654>
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