Moodle 3.9 LTS support date extended beyond PHP v7.4 EOL

Moodle 3.9 LTS support date extended beyond PHP v7.4 EOL

by Russell Morriss -
Number of replies: 15

Hi,

Apologies if this is the wrong location to raise this, I tried creating a tracker issue but was presented with a message that I needed to search or watch another tracker item first and couldn't find any related.

Moodle 3.9 LTS support has been extended to November 2023 which is great as plans can be committed for this version to be used for the entirety of the next academic year (UK: Aug 22 - Jul 23).

However PHP v7.4 is due to be end of Life November 2022 https://www.php.net/supported-versions.php

From the corresponding tracker item https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-70745 it seems that only Moodle 3.11 and newer are being prepared for PHP 8.

I am aware that Ubuntu 18.04 LTS supports EOL PHP versions but if you are not hosting on that platform what is the plan to have a supported stack beyond November 2022?

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In reply to Russell Morriss

Re: Moodle 3.9 LTS support date extended beyond PHP v7.4 EOL

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
What would you propose doing about that? It's a "risk", admittedly but 3.9 isn't going to be updated to Moodle 8 compatibility. Well, I very much doubt it...
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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Moodle 3.9 LTS support date extended beyond PHP v7.4 EOL

by Russell Morriss -
That is what I am trying to discern.

Historically I have stuck with LTS releases to have the easy life but depending on the appetite for risk, and the outcome of security audits from those who manage infrastructure this may not be an option. It certainly needs to be understood and agreed in advance of November.

Perhaps the only choice is to test and implement 3.11 (including plugins) with PHP 8, I wanted to put this out to the community to see if anyone else had picked this up and considered it yet.
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In reply to Russell Morriss

Re: Moodle 3.9 LTS support date extended beyond PHP v7.4 EOL

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
I'm not entirely sure what the thinking behind extending 3.9 was (first I heard of it actually). If you want my view, I'd start planning your upgrade to 3.11. Even if 3.9 is technically supported it's not been receiving bug fixes for nearly a year as it is. I think that might concern me more.

I'll say what I always say... you should never back yourself into a corner where upgrading is a huge deal. You never know when you might have to do it in an emergency for some reason.

I'm a little suspicious about 4.0 if I'm honest. I'd like someone else to give that a good shakedown before I consider it wink
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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Moodle 3.9 LTS support date extended beyond PHP v7.4 EOL

by Russell Morriss -

I suspect the reason for the 3.9 extension was purely slippage in the 4.0 release date and knock on delay for the 4.1 LTS.

Thank you for your thoughts. I will discuss with my colleagues but think you are right; the most sensible approach in this situation is to test early and implement 3.11 on PHP 8 ready for August / September. Hopefully I won't need to prune too many plugins that don't match pace.

No plans to jump straight to 4.0 here either, back to the LTS easy life when 4.1 comes out for me 🏖️

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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Moodle 3.9 LTS support date extended beyond PHP v7.4 EOL

by AL Rachels -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
@Howard,
When suspicious of upcoming releases, having a small board computer (SBC) such as a Raspberry Pi 3 or 4, or an Odroid XU4 comes in handy. I have had 3 copies of the upcoming Moodle 4 code running, ever since Moodle 3.11 was released. Note that Moodle 4.0rc1 (Build: 20220408) was released today. Anyway, the SBC's let me try out various combinations of server OS's, web servers, php, DB's, etc., to make sure the plugins I maintain, plus the others I use, are going to work and not cause me any surprises.
It also helps to look through all the tests created for the Moodle 4 QA testing, looking especially for "new" stuff to try out.
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In reply to AL Rachels

Re: Moodle 3.9 LTS support date extended beyond PHP v7.4 EOL

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Hardware and VMs to run stuff on is, luckily, not in short supply. We just have a lot of customisation and plugins that all need testing. Unfortunately, the release of 4.0 will be far too close to our upgrade window.
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In reply to Russell Morriss

Re: Moodle 3.9 LTS support date extended beyond PHP v7.4 EOL

by Russell Morriss -
Hi, Just to wrap this thread up it seems that PHP 8 support is going to be back-ported to Moodle 3.9
https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-70745
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In reply to Russell Morriss

Re: Moodle 3.9 LTS support date extended beyond PHP v7.4 EOL

by Marcus Green -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
It is not enough for Moodle to have PHP 8 support, your plugins will need it as well.
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In reply to Marcus Green

Re: Moodle 3.9 LTS support date extended beyond PHP v7.4 EOL

by Russell Morriss -
Granted, thanks. Hopefully with PHP 8 support in place early enough developers can work to test and update their plugins before PHP 7.4 goes EOL.
As I understand it this same issue for plugins applies to Moodle 3.11 and 4.0 as well.
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In reply to Russell Morriss

Re: Moodle 3.9 LTS support date extended beyond PHP v7.4 EOL

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
I suspect that it's more likely that end users running PHP 8 will be doing the testing...
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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Moodle 3.9 LTS support date extended beyond PHP v7.4 EOL

by Marcus Green -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
The cooler developers will include automated tests for PHP 8.0
e.g.
https://github.com/marcusgreen/moodle-qtype_gapfill/actions/runs/2543861251
But many will not.
On the upside, ensuring PHP 8.0 compatibility is generally not a big challenge. So for example I have had to do nothing at all to my own plugins to make tests run with PHP 8.0. But I don't run it when I am experimenting with them, so I might have missed something.
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In reply to Marcus Green

Re: Moodle 3.9 LTS support date extended beyond PHP v7.4 EOL

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
I oscillate between too lazy and too cynical to write automated tests. And I'm definitely not cool big grin
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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Moodle 3.9 LTS support date extended beyond PHP v7.4 EOL

by Marcus Green -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
One of my main reasons is the obvious coolness and style it implies about me, especially when it results in zero errors/zero warnings in the plugins database.
But it also pushes me towards more modular code and it eliminates issues that the tests do not even test. In fact I find automated tests are more useful in finding errors that they don't test for than issues they do test for, e.g. things that happen during installation.
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In reply to Marcus Green

Re: Moodle 3.9 LTS support date extended beyond PHP v7.4 EOL

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
Marcus G. wrote:
> It is not enough for Moodle to have PHP 8 support, your plugins will need it as well.

True. But still there is a difference between blaming the Moodle (core) developers and plug-in developers.
wink
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