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Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2014 22:55:09 +0100
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To: Andrea Faulds <ajf@ajf.me>
Cc: Jan Ehrhardt <phpdev@ehrhardt.nl>, "internals@lists.php.net" <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Status of PHP 5.4
From: cw@daverandom.com (Chris Wright)

On 14 August 2014 22:41, Andrea Faulds <ajf@ajf.me> wrote:
>
> On 14 Aug 2014, at 22:34, Jan Ehrhardt <phpdev@ehrhardt.nl> wrote:
>
>> PHP 5.3 has reached the real end of life. Will the effect be that from
>> now on PHP 5.4 will only get security fixes?
>
> I=E2=80=99m curious about this too. The release process RFC says only bug=
 fixes after 2 years, and it is well beyond that now (5.4 came out March 20=
12).
>
> Look at the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP#Release_his=
tory
>
> That 5.4 bit should be yellow. 5.6 ought to be green, too, but alas this =
release, like every, has been delayed.

For me this is a better way to explain why 5.4 is not (currently)
security only. We maintain the current and the previous, we should not
arbitrarily change the status of the previous before there is a new
current.

The release of 5.6 should push 5.4 into security-only state, rather
than the 5.3 EOL. I realise in this case it should happen at almost
the same time (I think the plan is that 5.6.0RC3 is the last RC?) but
let's imagine that 5.7 is delayed by 5 years for some reason - it's
reasonable to expect that 5.4 would be dropped a long time before 5.7
is released in this scenario, since "security only" mode is (as I see
it) only to give stragglers the chance to upgrade, we don't want to
maintain 3 branches for the sake of it.

The release process helps to ensure that upgrading should now be
considerably less painful that it previously was, and saying goodbye
to 5.3 means that all currently maintained branches have been
(largely) subject to this process. This makes "security only" for the
sake of stragglers less relevant, meaning that we shouldn't need to
keep 5.4 alive for nearly as long as 5.3 has been. Because of this,
when 5.4 *is* EOL, that doesn't necessarily mean that 5.5 is suddenly
security only.

IMO, YMMV

Thanks, Chris