Re: BC breaking changes in PHP 8.1

On Sep 22, 2021, at 11:24 AM, Matthew Weier O'Phinney <mweierophinney@gmail.com> wrote: > As somebody who's been contributing to and maintaining OSS libraries > forever (since 2002), the pace of change of PHP is, frankly, ridiculous. I > can keep up with patches. I can keep up with new features. But BC breaks > EVERY YEAR just creates churn. I've spent most of the past 18 months doing > nothing but ensuring libraries work on new PHP versions. I then get users > angry that they aren't getting new features; if I don't update to the > latest PHP version, I get other users angry they can't use the library on > the newer PHP version. And with new PHP versions every year... I > essentially have to update every 2-3 years regardless, and will lose users > if I don't do it every year. > > Figure out what the BC breaks are going to be, and do them all at once. > It's far easier for the ecosystem to adapt to a big drop of BC breaks every > 3-5 years than it is every year. There’s merit to spacing it out - I doubt anyone wants another PHP 7 flag day again. (Ask the Python people how they feel about moving all the breaking changes to a single release…)