CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpxampp
Jayapal Chandran
Jayapal Chandran

Reputation: 11140

how to maintain older versions when php and its libraries keep upgrading

I had been using sqlite 2 which was included in the xampp bundle.

after while i installed latest xampp bundle which had sqlite3.

Now when i run my code i get error and found that sqlite 2 is not available with the bundle.

Things like this happens with php and all its related libraries for example split function others.

If it is the localsystem no problem we are going to update it anyway but in the shared hosting when they upgrade to new php versions the existing webpages through errors.

how do we know that php is going to remove some function and replace it with other new functions instead of retaining the same name but with upgraded functionality?

what happens is when they upgrade or change the versions of the current existing functions in the server is the website breaks. you can see errors all over the page. many page wont work. seo rating goes down if not noticed. the users will not trust the site. this happened with wordpress also and mediawiki which i had been using for a while and when they upgraded php recently the modules did not load instead i got fatal errors. this is nasty.

in this case it will be hectic to keep upgrading your code for a specific interval(whenever php upgrades their functionality)

this is going endless as far as i have known.

what is the solution for this in the server side and in localhost.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 482

Answers (2)

deceze
deceze

Reputation: 522250

This is an issue indeed. And the only solution to this is:

  1. Consider your dependencies very well before writing code against them.
  2. Stay on the ball.

Before you decide to use any one particular technology to depend on, research whether it is slated for deprecation or is otherwise not recommended to be used in the future. The PHP guys are pretty good about pointing these things out in the manual, so reading the related pages on php.net is often good enough.

The PHP developers are pretty good about their deprecation process, having a very slow deprecation process for most of their APIs.

You will nevertheless need to stay on the ball. Follow the infrequent official announcements to get a feeling for what's changing and where you need to pay attention. The change logs for each major PHP release are usually worth studying.

If you have code running on a system which frequently changes without your doing, you need to pay attention to your host's announcements as well. If they don't announce major changes in advance, look for another host.

Build your error handlers so you'll be notified via email about serious errors. You may want to include a script which checks for the availability of major dependencies and notifies you if they're missing.

If you have critical code, you should not run it on shared hosts which do not offer you enough control over the platform. Run your own servers and be careful about upgrading PHP. There's a reason why old versions receive maintenance updates for a while.

Typically you have a system administrator manage the deployed code and the servers, you should communicate with this person what you require from the server and that person should talk to you if some major changes to the server are happening. If you are that person, like many sys-dev-ops are these days, you need to make this part of your job.

Upvotes: 2

Michel Feldheim
Michel Feldheim

Reputation: 18250

Good question. I say you worry too much. The PHP team really cares of downward compatibility. I am using PHP for over 10 years now, web changed a lot in this time, so did PHP. Changes are running through a very long deprecation process and are announced very long before they actually happen. Even then, in the cases I remember, it still was possible to do the deprecated way with newer versions.

This all is valid for the PHP core and extensions which are delivered with PHP itself.

In case of SQLlite I can't recall what was the deal there, never really used it.

In one of the newer PHP 5 versions they introduced the deprecated bit in the log level. If you switch your log level to E_ALL or -1 you'll get a line logged if you are using any deprecated function, so you are able to react early.

http://php.net/manual/en/function.error-reporting.php

In addition the release a list of depreciations and backward incompatible changes e.g.

http://php.net/manual/en/migration54.incompatible.php

All changes announced here were handled as bad practice many years before already so nobody should have to change code now.

I hope this is no longer killing you :) good luck

Upvotes: 1

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