Re: Maintaining PHP 5 documentation

Thanks for such a detailed answer! Would it make sense for someone to maintain a completely separate manual specifically for those retired docs? Advantages: - The rest of the team could maintain only docs for the current versions. - The legacy docs would still be online, searchable and linkable. I can find the resources necessary to make this work. Anna On Fri, Dec 4, 2020 at 2:24 PM G. P. B. <george.banyard@gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri, 4 Dec 2020 at 19:01, Anna Filina <me@afilina.com> wrote: > >> Hi team, >> >> I landed on this plain 404 page yesterday: >> >> https://www.php.net/manual/en/ini.sect.safe-mode.php#ini.safe-mode >> >> I was told that the PHP 5 docs are in the process of being removed from >> php.net. This is not ideal for me as I maintain and migrate legacy >> applications for a living. >> >> I would like to understand the reasoning behind this decision and perhaps >> offer some help to remedy the situation: >> - Are there any inherent problems with keeping the legacy docs online? >> > > We don't have multiple copies of the docs so everything lives on one page. > There is an archive of the PHP Documentation before we started removing > mentions of it. > Akin to how the PHP 4 docs are handled. > > > >> - How much effort does it require to maintain the legacy docs? >> > > Because everything is on one page, maintaining accurate docs for the range > PHP 5 - 8 > is rather impractical, many things changed, functions got removed, > functions had drastic > behavioural changes, etc. > > >> - Are there any associated costs? >> > > The human cost of needing to maintain such a large range of versions and > to maintain > and clarify docs which are only relevant to PHP 5 when we could spend our > time on > more productive things. > Secondly removing docs alleviates the burden on translations. > > >> Thanks, >> Anna Filina >> https://twitter.com/afilina (DMs are open) >> > > Hope this clarifies some of it. > > Best regards, > > George P. Banyard >