Drop support for Symfony 4.4 and PHP < 8.0

[tacman]

Given that this is a new bundle, with no existing user base with promises of backwards compatibility, I'd like to advocate for PHP8 and dropping Symfony support less than 5.4.

In particular, I really like using attributes instead of annotations. Also, strong type-hinting makes coding easier and more robust.

I've switched to 8.1, and although I'm not using any 8.1 specific features yet, given the newness of this bundle, I'm not sure how many people we'd lose if that were a requirement.

For example, MenuItemModel could be MUCH shorter by defining properties in the constructor (PHP 8.0) and I think some of those properties are readonly, and could be defined as such in the constructor (PHP 8.1)

While not essential, I think it would make for a better bundle, and certainly a better developer experience.

[kevinpapst]

In 99% of the cases people will use the bundle, not develop it. While I understand all of your arguments, I am not a fan of introducing such BC breaks that can easily be avoided.

with no existing user base

Even though that might sounds harsh: the most important user for this bundle is me. I am integrating this bundle into Kimai, my time-tracking app, and that is used by thousands of users. They will get the bundle in a couple of month with the next major release and given the circumstances how companies handle infrastructure updates I am not keen to force them to upgrade their servers just for the sake of getting access to constructor promotion or annotations.

I do understand everyone who advocates for that step, I just don't think the time is right to force an upgrade to 8.
So I am against that for now. But I don't mind talking about it again in 6 months.

[cavasinf]

With what kevinpapst said,
it's too "soon" to switch to 8.1.
For my case, AWS doesn't have (ATM) a linux AMI with PHP 8.1 (only 8.0).

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I am not keen to force them to upgrade their servers

I'm not 100% following you with that.

We still a have deadlines with those techs:

• Php 7.4 will end at begin 2023 https://www.php.net/supported-versions.php
• Symfony 4.4 will end at begin 2024 https://symfony.com/releases

[kevinpapst]

But it sounds as if you are following with what I say, but maybe that is a language barrier issue 😬

As much as I like new language features: I will not raise the bar to PHP 8 yet. That is all that I am saying. I was just trying to elaborate on the "why". I don't think we have to wait for end of 2023, but end of 2021 is too early for me either.

[tacman]

Are there plans to support Symfony 6?

[kevinpapst]

Yes, definitely. Are you using the bundle?
I don't think there is anything that should block your from using it right away (besides the composer limitation).
Could you give it a try?