[wp-hackers] php -v

[Thomas Scholz]

John Blackbourn,

> There is little argument in favour of raising the minimum required PHP
> version to 5.3 because of the limited increase in features that it  
> provides
> over 5.2 (namespacing and closures being the main ones).

The most important “features” is that you cannot disable SPL in 5.3  
anymore. With 5.3 we could use real auto-loaders (performance!),  
iterators, default interfaces like Countable and so on.

Even WordPress core would benefit from that: one of the most used  
functions—add_filter()—could rely on spl_object_hash(), and we could  
finally drop the current terrible workaround.

Just extend Browse Happy with a notice about the outdated PHP version for  
the next two major WP versions, and 5.2 will vanish very soon.

The WP stats don’t differentiate between abandoned WP installations (still  
on old WP versions) and those which are kept up to date. The real impact  
of a 5.3 requirement would hit much less users than the simple diagram  
suggests.

The latest required PHP version should always be one still receiving  
security updates by PHP. 5.2 is and will stay insecure. In my opinion, the  
current requirements hurt our users.

Thomas