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Any problems upgrading to PHP 5.6?

Posted by Emmanuel Bigler 
Any problems upgrading to PHP 5.6?
April 05, 2016 10:02AM
Hello from France!

I'm currently running Phorum 5.2.19 with PHP 5.4 and our Internet provider requires that we upgrade PHP, since apparently PHP 5.4 is no longer supported.

According to this web page,
http://php.net/downloads.php
the latest PHP 5 version is 5.6.20
Before upgrading PHP I would like to know if there are any known issue running Phorum 5.2.19 or 5.2.20 with PHP 5.6.20

Thanks in advance!!

Emmanuel Bigler
Re: Any problems upgrading to PHP 5.6?
April 06, 2016 08:59AM
Hi Emmanuel,

I'm still using PHP 5.4.

But I did already an analysis based on PHP documentation for depreciated functions. I didn't find something.

Regards
Oliver


Using Phorum since 7/2000: forum.langzeittest.de (actual version 5.2.23)
Modules "Made in Germany" for version 5.2: Author_as_Sender, CarCost, Close_Topic, Conceal_Message_Timestamp,
Format_Email, Index_Structure, Mailing_List, Pervasive_Forum, Spritmonitor, Terms_of_Service and German_Language_Files_Package.
Re: Any problems upgrading to PHP 5.6?
April 08, 2016 06:04AM
Many thanks, Oliver, for your answer.

I have noticed that 5.6 will be the last version of PHP in the 5.X series, the new version will be 7.X but I'm reluctant to jump to 7.X too soon.
As far as I understand the PHP development calendar,
http://php.net/supported-versions.php
version 5.6 will still be updated at least for critical issues until the end of year 2018.

This hopefully lets the Phorum development gurus some time to get Phorum ready for PHP 7.X

Al the best!

Emmanuel Bigler
Re: Any problems upgrading to PHP 5.6?
April 08, 2016 10:52AM
Regarding PHP 7.x, it was installed on my server during an upgrade. Phorum still works, but I have some issues, especially when displaying some forms in some module. It appears that all the issues I have found to date are related to the assignment by reference, known as a backward incompatibility: [php.net]

Practically speaking, I resolved the issues by replacing the assignment =& by =
Re: Any problems upgrading to PHP 5.6?
April 11, 2016 02:55AM
Hi,

Quote
slashbin
It appears that all the issues I have found to date are related to the assignment by reference, known as a backward incompatibility: [php.net]

Can you provide me a copy of your changes? I'll try to move them to the Phorum source.

Regards
Oliver


Using Phorum since 7/2000: forum.langzeittest.de (actual version 5.2.23)
Modules "Made in Germany" for version 5.2: Author_as_Sender, CarCost, Close_Topic, Conceal_Message_Timestamp,
Format_Email, Index_Structure, Mailing_List, Pervasive_Forum, Spritmonitor, Terms_of_Service and German_Language_Files_Package.
No problems found so far upgrading to PHP 5.6
April 11, 2016 04:39AM
Many thanks for the info! And thanks for sharing your experiences with PHP 7.0!

Meanwhile, our Phorum 5.2 was updated to PHP 5.6.20 today (2016-04-11) and so far, so good, no issues found in Phorum.

We'll probably wait until PHP 5.6 is non longer maintained to make the upgrade to PHP 7.0

Emmanuel Bigler
Re: Any problems upgrading to PHP 5.6?
April 15, 2016 07:48AM
Hi,

Quote
slashbin
It appears that all the issues I have found to date are related to the assignment by reference, known as a backward incompatibility. [...] Practically speaking, I resolved the issues by replacing the assignment =& by =

I couldn't find any assignment by reference in Phorum core and the modules I'm using...

Regards
Oliver


Using Phorum since 7/2000: forum.langzeittest.de (actual version 5.2.23)
Modules "Made in Germany" for version 5.2: Author_as_Sender, CarCost, Close_Topic, Conceal_Message_Timestamp,
Format_Email, Index_Structure, Mailing_List, Pervasive_Forum, Spritmonitor, Terms_of_Service and German_Language_Files_Package.
Re: Any problems upgrading to PHP 5.6?
April 19, 2016 11:13AM
I had issues mostly with modules, when the function PhorumInputForm is called.

In the Phorum system itself, the same issue appears in two admin files (with Phorum 5.2.20), more specifically the files rebuild.php and cache.php. I solve this issue by changing the line
$frm = &new PhorumInputForm ( "", "post" );
to
$frm = new PhorumInputForm ( "", "post" );
in order to let form be displayed.
Re: Any problems upgrading to PHP 5.6?
May 19, 2016 11:41PM
There are issues with images.
[www.phorum.org]

This patch worked for me [github.com]
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