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Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2021 11:39:56 -0300
Cc: "G. P. B." <george.banyard@gmail.com>,
 PHP Developers Mailing List <internals@lists.php.net>
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To: Matthew Weier O'Phinney <mweierophinney@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] BC breaking changes in PHP 8.1
From: calvin@cmpct.info (Calvin Buckley)

On Sep 22, 2021, at 11:24 AM, Matthew Weier O'Phinney =
<mweierophinney@gmail.com> wrote:
> As somebody who's been contributing to and maintaining OSS libraries
> forever (since 2002), the pace of change of PHP is, frankly, =
ridiculous. I
> can keep up with patches. I can keep up with new features. But BC =
breaks
> EVERY YEAR just creates churn. I've spent most of the past 18 months =
doing
> nothing but ensuring libraries work on new PHP versions. I then get =
users
> angry that they aren't getting new features; if I don't update to the
> latest PHP version, I get other users angry they can't use the library =
on
> the newer PHP version. And with new PHP versions every year... I
> essentially have to update every 2-3 years regardless, and will lose =
users
> if I don't do it every year.
>=20
> Figure out what the BC breaks are going to be, and do them all at =
once.
> It's far easier for the ecosystem to adapt to a big drop of BC breaks =
every
> 3-5 years than it is every year.

There=E2=80=99s merit to spacing it out - I doubt anyone wants another =
PHP 7 flag day again.

(Ask the Python people how they feel about moving all the breaking =
changes to a single release=E2=80=A6)