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Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2019 12:01:09 +0100
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Migration tooling and the cumulative cost of purely
 syntactical deprecations
From: lester@lsces.uk (Lester Caine)

On 11/10/2019 11:25, Nikita Popov wrote:
> If we provide this kind of tooling, I think that the cost/benefit
> calculation on deprecation changes: If we have any syntactic deprecations
> at all, then it basically doesn't matter how many different (syntactical)
> things get deprecated in one release, the migration cost is always going to
> be the same. (This is of course a slightly simplified view, but close
> enough.)

A practical example ...

I've just sorted out access to a new clients web hosting and fixed 
things so I can actually log into the wordpress admin panel. Since there 
has been no access since the previous support person who set up the site 
went awall there are a lot of messages to deal with. The first one being 
that PHP is out of date so wordpress can't upgrade. THAT is good to see 
since I already know that the site will be broken if it HAD simply 
updated as has happened on other sites! The question now is just what 
process to follow to update without taking the site off-line. This is 
not something the sites owner would ever be able to handle hence the 
request to help out ...

In the case of wordpress, the next problem is working out just what 
plugins are currently active, which ones will work if wordpress is 
updated, and which may need to be replaced. But the starting point is 
what will happen if I start by switching PHP5.5 to PHP5.6 so that 
wordpress can be updated at all. Should I simply move direct to 7.2 
which I have other wordpress sites running on and crib sheets to help 
fixing the problems I have already tracked.

None of this can be sorted by using tools that fix the raw code. The 
only route is via third party upgrades which relate to which version of 
PHP is running. *IF* php was a lot more stable when RUNNING older code 
then one COULD simply update the version and then play catch-up with 
other updates, but with the current situation, one often has to fix raw 
code problems to get the older stable site into a state that the upgrade 
process will actually work.

Bottom line ... can I justify a decent price for the time sorting all of 
this will take when there is no indication just how long it WILL take, 
and then what work will be required in addition to simply removing the 
nannying messages from wordpress ...

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
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