Tell me you don't understand PHP without telling me directly:
> WordPress requires only a small number of PHP extensions (currently just json and mysql). Per the data from sites phoning home, PCRE is present on 100% of WordPress sites and could be made required.
PCRE is *always* present in PHP since 5.3...
What the F is the community meant to do for WP if WP doesn't even understand the technology they use.
> Opportunities for overlap with PHP Core
IDK have Automattic pay for someone to monitor the list and RFCs? I truly don't understand how with over a thousand employees this *still* is not the case.
> Upstreaming spec-compliant web standards into PHP: HTML parsing, URL parsing, HTTP header parsing, Query arg parsing, MIME content-type inference. This is an area WordPress could help improve or sponsor work on, which would benefit WordPress and PHP at large.
Gee yeah that would have been useful to do *years* ago, and not realise this now *after* a new HTML5 compliant parser for DOM was introduced in 8.4 and URI parsing in 8.5/8.6 has been added with query parsing already being worked on.
> Part of this is due to WordPress being seen as dragging PHP backwards because of its backwards compatibility commitments.
Maybe because WP quite literally prioritises keeping support for *ancient* PHP version rather than newer ones? WP 6.2 released in 2023 *still* supported PHP 5.6, 5 years after it was EOL (PHP 8.2 was the latest stable at the time). [1]
I don't expect day 1 compat with a new version, but there is a *reason* why the community feels this way.
[1]: https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/php-compatibility-and-wordpress-versions/
And this is not new, as from what I know WP refused to participate in the Go PHP 5 project (https://gophp5.org/).
This was before my time, so maybe I am wrong. But when as a project you have a pattern of not pushing the ecosystem *forward* you will, quite naturally, be seen as holding it backwards.
> WordPress doesn’t need much from the language and has always been conservative in adopting language features. Server performance and security are what pull WordPress in; language features are pushed harder by frameworks like Laravel.
I'd love to hear the opinion of some of the other PHP CMS and eShop platforms as this seems like a whack justification. Because if you didn't need much from the language, upgrading *should* be easy and straightforward. As the surface you rely on is minimal.
@Girgias I have truly made an effort to try to make them see the light. Unfortunately, my proposal was blocked by the powers that be.... (even though widely hailed as a good plan TM)
@jrf_nl Oh I know, without you WP would truly be left in the dust from an internals perspective (*cough* readonly *cough* caught in beta 3 *cough*).
And I found it at the time (and still now) to be an *extremely* conservative approach to the upgrade cycle.
It is somewhat a miracle that the 5% usage threshold means that PHP 7.4 is the minimal version required now. But it feels getting to PHP 8.X is going to take a few years....
@Girgias Oh, I fully agree it was a conservative approach, but that was deliberate. I went with a proposal which at least would have a chance of getting accepted. Anything more progressive would have been shot down without even a discussion.
If accepted, this would at least get WP moving - and moving steadily -, which is better than what was - and still is - happening.
@Girgias Also - if it had been accepted, WP would have had a PHP 8.2 minimum by end of this year, which no matter how conservative, is a hell of a lot better than what they have now.