Long-awaiting official support for PHP 8.4 in PHP-CS-Fixer is finally here 🥳! We know, it's long overdue, but for a reason... Let us explain a bit, for transparency and clean atmosphere around the project.
First of all, we are fully aware that tool like Fixer should support new PHP releases from day 0, but in reality it's not that simple. The project has 3 (let's emphasise this: three) active maintainers, whose activity depends on many factors. Even though we take this responsibility very seriously, at the same time we need to prioritise our time and efforts. Sometimes it's just not meant to have focus on OSS, and there's nothing wrong about it. People often take OSS maintenance for granted, expecting that we (Fixer team) will provide solutions for their problems and needs, but we believe that the true nature of OSS is overlooked by many of them. It's not about you, it's not about maintainers - it's about the good of the project and its users. And most importantly: it's open for everyone to contribute. You want Fixer to support PHP 8.4? Great, then help with verifying if it works correctly on a 8.4-based sources, provide tests, fix bugs if any were found... That's how it should work in a healthy community. Fixer has many great contributors, but somehow support for new PHP releases is not the topic that engage them 😅. Yes, you could say "but if I work on Fixer in my free time, and I provide PR(s) related to new PHP version support, it still needs to be reviewed and merged, but since maintainers' activity is not reliable, it may end up forgotten and my time would have got wasted", and we really understand that concern. We can't guarantee either implementing stuff on our own, and reviewing contributed code, because we simply have our lifes, families, jobs, hobbies, and Fixer is "just" a side project that we like. We don't get paid for this, we do it because we want to bring value to the PHP community. But this can't be done at the expense of our private matters.
We will do our best to bring PHP 8.5 support faster, maybe even on day 0. But it also may be done half a year after its release. It depends - on us, on all of you. We encourage you to contribute to the project, let's grow Fixer together!
We thank all the people who participated in PHP 8.4 milestone no matter how - finding and reporting bugs, implementing features and fixes, providing feedback in the PRs or discussions. We all did it in the end, time to celebrate 🥳!
What's Changed
- feat: PHP 8.4 compatibility support by @Wirone, @kubawerlos, @keradus and others in #8300
Full Changelog: v3.79.0...v3.80.0