On 21.06.2016 at 20:26, Larry Garfield wrote:
> On 06/21/2016 11:52 AM, Christoph Becker wrote:
>
>> However, if there is no bytecode cache available on the production
>> system for whatever reason, it's still possible to merge all (or some
>> reasonable subsets of) classes into a single file (a few files) during
>> build time.
>
> True, but in what situation would you not have an opcode cache available
> that is not one of:
>
> 1) Your PHP version is so out of date you may as well give up, because
> it's already insecure.
> 2) Your webhost is so terrible that the best thing you can do for your
> app is to get a new webhost.
Indeed, that's what I would think of, too. However, consider off the
shelf applications. These can either require recent PHP versions
including the availability of certain extensions/features (such as
bytecode caches), or not. If they do, they risk either loosing parts of
their user base ("I don't want to upgrade my cheap webhost contract;
I'll rather switch to another software."), or, even worse, some users
won't update to new versions, and that might fall back on the software
developers/supporters (more "bug" reports, bad reputation if yet another
XYZ site has been hacked).
Of course, in an ideal world there would be no issue, but in practise,
there is. See, for instance, Wordpress, which still runs on PHP
5.2.4+[1]. The recommendation to use PHP 5.6+, is only, well, a
recommendation, which is likely to be ignored by some users at least.
While WordPress could easily enforce PHP 5.6+, the developers don't do
that, quite likely due to the reasons mentioned above.
I dislike to be restricted to old PHP versions, but I also dislike all
those support requests like:
Q: after upgrading to the new version, I'm getting a blank screen
A: please enable debug mode
Q: I get "Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_FUNCTION …"
A: <del>RTFM</del>
you have to upgrade to PHP 5.3+ as described in the manual
According to w3techs.com there are still ~10% PHP 5.2 installations out
there, and PHP 5.5+ is available only on ~30% of servers.[2] That
matches my personal experience. Sad, but true.
[1] <https://wordpress.org/about/requirements/>
[2] <https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-php/5/all>
--
Christoph M. Becker
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