PHP 5.6 EOL on 12/18
 

With PHP 5.6 EOL looming I was wondering if anybody knew if an update is in the works?

If it's going to be an upgrade to 7.1 or 7.2 and if this will be yet another 14.2/Current update or if 14.1 will see a little love

Upgrading from 5.6 to 7.2 in Current broke almost everything for me.
Just saying... and I'm still working on it.

I assume current will bump to 7.x because it make s little sense to ship EOL'd software in the distro. I am not sure what to expect for 14.x because 5.6 - > 7.x has all kinds of breaking changes for apps; that you would not expect in a stable platform update.

Fortunately, the current keeps php-5.6 in pasture. Thanks PV!

Agreed, that would (should) be a safe assumption

Agreed, but making it available as an optional patch at least for a (controlled migration) would IMO be much better than the alternative.

I'm sitting on three 14.1 production servers running 5.6 and it would be nice to have 3 - 4 weeks making necessary code changes in a virtual copy of one of the servers before updating. Than having to sit and pray I'm not exploited and then be faced with forced server upgrades when current is moved to stable (14.3/15.0 whatever) which will create larger problems

Yea I'm expecting that which is why I'm trying find out what the plan is.
It would be nice to make sure code works and make necessary changes before 5.6 EOL

Hopefully you can get an official package for php7 on 14.1, but there is no guarantee that will happen. But since Slackware is Slackware, you can always build your own package and start making the necessary changes for your sites to move to the new version.

You can grab the source from -current and see if it will build on 14.1 unmodified.

And that likely may be the direction I'll have to go.


Perhaps someone from the dev team will chime in and provide some insight on what's planned (if anything)

I do not use PHP on my home Slackware systems, but at work I had some PHP 7.x issues on CentOS 7. The friendly point is that bumping Slackware 14.x to 7.x might cause issues. Perhaps Pat can throw PHP 7.x into /testing. After the dust settles move from /testing to /patches. :)

I found this and this about migrating to 7.x.

Good point and idea

Thanks for that!

Okay,

I've built a php-7.2 slackbuild for 14.1 but have one question before I upgrade.

Aside from personal php files, is there any thing within Slackware 14.1 itself that might break by upgrading from 5.6 to 7.2?

I wouldn't assume so, but I want to make sure that there aren't any nasty surprises lurking in the shadows

Ken

It may or may not affect apache

Don

Hello Don, Happy New Year to you :)

Thanks for the reply,

I've thought about Apache and compared the httpd.slackbuild "configure" statements between 14.1 and current, and with the exception of two http2 lines in the current version, they're identical.

I wouldn't expect apache to have a problem but to be honest I will likely be holding my breath

Well, here's an update for anybody who might be interested.

I hope it'll save someone time chasing down requirements to get this working.

The PHP 7.2.13 slackbuild I created for Slackware 14.1 was installed and httpd (so far) appears to be running fine.

To build this I used the following:

-- From 14.1 patch/source --
php.slackbuild

-- From current /source --
php.slackbuild -- RENAMED - USED FOR REFERENCE ONLY
doinst.sh.gz -
php-7.2.13.txz.gz
php-fpm.conf.diff.gz
php.ini-development.diff.gz
slack-desc

-- From 14.1 source --
/alpine - (all files)

-- From slackbuilds.org/14.1 --
libsodium - obtain current tar.gz (I used stable)

-- TO DO --

Create a build directory (eg - php-build) and change into the directory
1) Inside (php-build) create folder - alpine > save alpine source files in this folder (nothing else needs to be done)

2) Inside (php-build) download slackbuild libsodium.tgz and libsodium-stable.tar.gz.
Unpack libsodium.tgz and move to libsodium directory. Edit libsodium.Slackbuild and change VERSION: to VERSION:-stable
Build and install libsodium package

3) Inside (php-build) create folder php and change into folder
Download all files from - current/source/php, rename php.SlackBuild to php.SlackBuild.current
Download php.SlackBuild from - 14.1/patches/source/php - No other files required

Open php.SlackBuild in a text editor and replace the configure arguments with the arguments from php.SlackBuild.current

create folder pear

You should now have the following directories
php-build/alpine
php-build/libsodium
php-build/php
php-build/php/pear

You should now be ready to build

Before installing, shutdown httpd. After installation /etc/httpd/mod_php and php.ini will need to be replaced with their respective .new files located in the directory

Once replaced, you should be able to start httpd services

-- TIP --
Before installing backup your /etc/httpd/mod_php.conf* and php.ini* files as well as php-fpm files in /etc and /etc/php-fpm/ . This will make restoring files easier if you need to revert back to 5.6


I hope this helps somebody, but I make no guarantees that something won't get messed up.

Ken

Don't forget as well - not to dissuade your upgrade efforts - that php5.6 was shipped in Debian Jessie and is in LTS mode until June 30, 2020. Debian have stated they will continue to support PHP 5.6 until that time even after the PHP team stops shipping important security patches. So importing any future security patches from Debian may be an option for people wishing to extend the life of PHP 5.6 for a longer period of time.