As of 31st December 2016, Jadu will no longer be testing our products and their regular Continuum releases against PHP version 5.3 in favour of a PHP 5.6 baseline testing regime.
So what version of PHP is now supported?
PHP 5.6 has been tested and supported by Jadu since April 2015.
Will Jadu software still work with PHP 5.3?
Jadu initially deprecated PHP 5.3 in CMS release #26. We have consciously not yet started to develop with features of the PHP language that only exist within later versions because we want to give our customers enough time to plan and implement any necessary changes whilst we strive to continue to ship new features and fixes regularly. We cannot however continue to test against and therefore officially support PHP 5.3 based implementations from 31st December 2016 onwards.
Why have we done this / what are the benefits that we (the customer) will realise?
A whole host of reasons really, those of particular note include...
- Security; more secure with the removal of register globals settings etc.
- Performance; internal language optimizations as well as vastly reduced memory usage.
- PHP community support; PHP 5.3 is no longer maintained - this therefore impacts such as your PSN compliance returns for example.
- 3rd party library support; Releases Jadu, our partners and customers from older versions of libraries that have/become inactive maintainance wise (we'll be changing our compatibility requirement in composer, which will no longer enforce 3rd party compatibility with PHP 5.3).
- PHP enhancements; New and more consistent PHP language features for your developers to utilise.
- Operating architecture support; support for more modern underlying OS’s & architectures such as 64-bit support.
How long will PHP 5.6 be supported for?
PHP 5.3 security support ended mid-2014, so it’s imperative that we progress anyone still running PHP 5.3 forwards to a maintained version.
The PHP community have announced that the current scheduled end of security fixes for PHP 5.6 will be around 31st Dec 2018. Before this time comes, Jadu will have moved our products forwards to support PHP version 7.x (or later) within our software. We expect to be able to begin to support PHP version 7.x implementations early 2017.
What is the level of effort and what is involved in this process?
This will depend on a number of factors including:
- How many environments you have that will require the PHP version upgrading on
- Who hosts / manages these environments on a day-to-day basis for you
- Scale of any custom developments / modules that you might have and whether these are supported by Jadu or developed internally within your organisation. Any internally developed solutions should be checked / tested / changed to work under PHP 5.6 accordingly.
How do I find out if this impacts me?
We have analysed the current customer base (both those in active projects and those already live) and will be raising a support ticket in your account if we have determined that action is required in your specific case. This ticket will give you more details about planned next steps. If you have not received a support ticket and wish to discuss this with us, then please contact the support team.
We have a support contract with Jadu/Spacecraft, what does this cover in relation to this upgrade?
We will assist in this effort for customers with an active support agreement for the supported environment and for those environments that we host & manage for you. The upgrade of any supplemental environments not covered by an active support agreement or hosted by us, will need to be managed by the relevant team / organisation that manages these on your behalf.
We host with Jadu/Spacecraft, what does this mean for me?
We will be undertaking a programme of work to move any customers that require any effort between now and 31st December 2016. After the initial support ticket is raised, we will continue to communicate with relevant personnel within your organisation ahead of time regarding any planned maintenance work to move you towards a supportable environment.
We host internally or with a 3rd party provider, what will we need to do?
If you host your own Jadu software internally or via a 3rd party hosting provider, then upgrades of these environments will need to be planned by the relevant team / organisation. We can supply guidance as to the steps we will be undertaking for environments that we manage, but these may need to be adjusted / adapted for anything specific to your own specific hosting arrangements.
## We have custom written code that we’ve added ourselves, what can we do to check it will work?
You will only need to check PHP code that you have authored or changed and not the core Jadu software. This might include for example:
- Custom widgets that you’ve uploaded
- Frontend website templates added or changed
- Custom snippets that you’ve added
- Custom actions / connectors / extensions to extensible modules such as XFP
- Custom Control Centre modules / module pages that you’ve added
When beginning the process of checking any of your customised code for PHP 5.6 support, we utilised open source tools such as PHP Code sniffer and PHPCompatibility that can be used to scan a codebase and report upon the use of features of the language that may no longer exist within the 5.6 version of the PHP language for instance. Various tutorials exist for developers to follow along with when using tools such as this, a couple of examples of which are provided below:
http://enzolutions.com/articles/2015/06/07/how-to-check-php-compatibility/ https://blog.nerdery.com/2013/11/code-compatible-php-5-4-5-5/ (update to check against 5.6 respectively)
I have other questions not answered in this page, who can I speak to about these?
If you have any initial follow on questions then please raise those in response to the support tickets that we raise on your behalf in your accounts so that we can get you and any other customers that might have the same questions all the information you need in good time to plan your upgrades during this calendar year. We will update this document with any common questions & answers as hey come through to us.