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Raise the minimum PHP version to 8.3

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Assessment

Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Newbie friendliness
62/100
Issue type
Refactor
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
php
Domain
build-system, documentation

Research direction

Start with the php constraint in composer.json and the symfony/polyfill-php81 entry in its require block, then run composer update --lock to refresh composer.lock. Confirm that array_is_list() is the only polyfilled call in src/ before removing the package, and update the minimum PHP version in README. Done when composer.json requires >=8.3, the polyfill is gone, and CI passes on PHP 8.3 and 8.4.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

category::task maintenance priority::normal

Description

composer.json requires php >=7.4, but nothing checks that. CI runs PHP 8.3 and 8.4 only, config.platform.php is pinned to 8.3.0, and the dev dependencies (PHPUnit 10, drupal/core-dev ^11) do not install below 8.3. The test suite cannot run on the minimum we advertise.

I ran a smoke test on PHP 7.4.33 with Drupal 9.5.11 and PHPUnit 9.6. The code in src/ still works there: the README example renders as documented and 57 of 63 tests pass. The other 6 fail because tests/src/ArrayToStdClassTest.php already declares mixed parameters, which is PHP 8 syntax. So 7.4 support works by accident and will break without anyone noticing.

The only Drupal that runs on PHP 7.4 is Drupal 9, which is end of life. Composer refuses to install any 9.5 release by default because of open security advisories.

Raise the minimum to PHP 8.3. That is the oldest version CI tests, so the declared minimum and the tested minimum become the same.

Acceptance Criteria

  • composer.json requires "php": ">=8.3" and composer.lock is refreshed with composer update --lock.
  • symfony/polyfill-php81 is removed from require. The only function src/ uses from it is array_is_list(), which is native since PHP 8.1.
  • The README states PHP 8.3 as the minimum.
  • composer test passes in CI on PHP 8.3 and 8.4.
  • The commit is marked as a breaking change (feat!: or a BREAKING CHANGE: footer) so semantic-release publishes 3.0.0 instead of a 2.x release.

Additional Context

Sites on PHP older than 8.3 keep getting 2.x, currently v2.5.3, through their existing Composer constraint.

Related and out of scope: src/RecursiveTypeCaster.php:153 uses a (boolean) cast, which PHP 8.5 deprecates in favour of (bool). CI does not run 8.5 yet.

Dominant language
PHP
Stars
11
Forks
5
Avg merge
12m
Merged PRs (30d)
2

Getting set up

This project ships no dev container, Dockerfile or contributing guide, so setting up is up to you: start from its README, and see our first-contribution guide for the general steps.

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

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