PHP 5.3 broke quite a few applications (deprecated functions warnings). I think that the PHP folks royally screwed up by having it write error messages to the output stream, but that's water under the bridge... I do agree that sufficient time has passed that even folks who don't pay much attention to their site code and don't really care whether they're anywhere near the leading edge should be thinking about getting 5.3 compatible (also Apache 2 compatible, to reference dibbkd's other post, and MySQL 5 compatible to throw in yet another). Servers can't stay at old versions forever, as they will become favorite targets of hackers. Are we entering data into our PCs via punch cards, because some people couldn't be bothered to update to a keyboard?
I would suggest the following, to make it easier on unskilled site owners who really don't know what they're doing:
- Give at least a six month warning, and send emails to all site owners reminding them (ticklers at 3 months and 1 month to go).
- Publish a Wiki page with what kind of things can need to be updated in the code.
- For common canned applications (at least, everything installed by Fantastico and LPCP's installer), what versions would be the new minimum level, and the easiest way to update. I'm assuming that everything currently offered on Fantastico is PHP 5.3/MySQL 5/Apache 2 compatible. (Maybe it isn't!) Note that osCommerce 2.3.1, not 3.0.2, should be the upgrade path for that product.
- Applications that have been dropped from Fantastico, or don't have their own easy update path, or have not been updated, will be a problem for users without programming skills. Offer an inexpensive service and/or a services referral (especially to people on this forum
me me me) to people who can do the job at a fair price. - Consider scanning sites for code that would be known to be a problem, and informing owners of what you find. (Would many people raise a stink about LP looking through their files?) PHP 5.3 has a long list of deprecated function calls that should be fairly easy to spot. MySQL could be tougher, as SQL queries are frequently built up in PHP. At the least, you could flag JOIN commands (JOIN within a string) to be manually checked. I have no idea about Apache 2 upgrades needed.
You can call the campaign: "Let's enter the 21
st century together!"
Now, there
will be a few holdouts who either can't be bothered, or can't afford even a cheap fixup of their code. Maybe keep one or two servers at old (current) levels for them, and abandon them to their fate. Finally, I'm assuming that any changes
needed for the new code levels will be compatible with existing PHP/MySQL/Apache, and site owners could incorporate them without trouble. Some may not be.
