Support of Namespaces

[Progi1984]

Hello :-),

PHPExcel requires PHP 5.2 as the lowest PHP version needed to run. PHP 5.3 is reaching its EOL (this month). It's why I propose to use PHP 5.4 as the new lowest required PHP version.

I understand that some users are still using PHP 5.3 and won't be able to migrate as soon as possible. It's why I open this issue for discussing

Pros of using PHP 5.4 :

• some tricky code will be dropped (and we are talking about several hundreds of LOC),
• (consequentely) code will be easier to maintain,
• global performances.

Cons of using PHP 5.4 :

• some users are not using 5.4, even if they must (because 5.3/5.2 will be definitively dead).

Poke @PHPOffice/phpexcel-team / @MarkBaker

[MarkBaker]

Sadly, there's still a significant proportion of users still on PHP 5.2.... I've been trying to push PHP 5.3 as a minimum version for the past 18 months and encountering a lot of resistance.... at least 5.3 allows closures, late static binding, namespacing, etc which all help reduce the lines of code and improve performance; while a jump to 5.4 would help improve performance still further

[WanderingZombie]

@MarkBaker for my 2p, you can't please all of the people all of the time. Your code offering is currently (in my experience anyway using it with PHP 5.3.x, 5.4.x and now 5.5.14) very stable. If you wait until no-one complains about a jump to PHP 5.4, we'll probably be using PHP 6.x. Even Zend Framework 2 has recently bumped it's minimum requirement from an early PHP 5.3 to a much later 5.3 release.

I would therefore advocate creating a final release that's compatible with PHP 5.2-5.5 and then move on with a newer cleaner code base that requires 5.4 as a minimum.

[MarkBaker]

I've already been refactoring a new version 2 of PHPExcel using 5.3 as a minimum, with namespacing, psr0-compliant autoloader, object factories, full use of SPL, more composition, more DI, and etc, breaking down a lot of the monolithic methods into smaller SOLID methods. that should be a lot easier to unit test, and a lot easier to manage going forward... but not backward compatible with the older version (different objects, different methods, a bootstrap).

5.4 would allow me to use function array dereferencing and $this in closures, but little that 5.3 doesn't already give in benefits (I'm not going to start using traits).... the biggest benefit of 5.4 over 5.3 is improved execution speed (and the fact that it's still supported), but I don't have any issues with saying 5.3 minimum rather than 5.4

5.5 would give some real bonuses - access to the array_column() function (though it can be simulated with array_map()) and generators in particular - but is certainly a step too far at the moment.

The lack of backward compatibility with the version 1 branch is the biggest drawback, but does make for a clean break from a lot of the legacy problems, and allows me to clean up some of the incompatibilities as well.

Of most concern to me are the usage statistics ( w3techs and Pascal Martin) which show that over 25% of PHP users are still running on 5.2... that figure is likely to have dropped by the end of the year, and my PHPExcel2 code is unlikely to be stable enough before then, but I'm keeping a close eye on those figures.

[MarkBaker]

PHP 5.3 is now officially end of life

[Progi1984]

@MarkBaker So ?

[MarkBaker]

So I wish people would only use supported versions of PHP, then we'd be able to say PHP 5.4 as a minimum version of PHP

[Progi1984]

@MarkBaker A beautiful wish. So we wait the release of Pascal Martin's stats... and may be PHPExcel2 will arrive :)

[scannerGT]

As a user of this library, I can only say that for me, cutting off from the the old code, and thus improve the package would be great.

[davidjdixon]

Can I just say that using the kind of stats shown above to indicate php version popularity is complete folly. These stats ONLY show the number of websites up and running. 99.9% of these websites will be complete websites with no ongoing development so why should the fact that these website not be able to run the latest version of a library matter?

Focus should be on websites in development not sites already released, and trying to assume a correlation exists between the 2 will be fruitless, especially since 5.2's long usage history (eg 3 year gap between 5.2 and 5.3, many popular linux distros not adding default 5.3 installs for a good 1-2 years after release).

Granted shared hosting is an issue as they are often slower to adopt new software, however that become less of an issue since 2011 when the PHP group put very hard limits on minor version lifetime.

I'm not saying what version of php to set as minimum, what I am saying however is the justification given so far is not logical and focuses on very spurious statistics.

[jmleroux]

So I wish people would only use supported versions of PHP, then we'd be able to say PHP 5.4 as a minimum version of PHP

👍

The lack of backward compatibility with the version 1 branch is the biggest drawback, but does make for a clean break from a lot of the legacy problems, and allows me to clean up some of the incompatibilities as well.

👍 BC-breaks are inevitable, and the 2.0 version is the perfect time to introduce them.
I look forward for v2.
Thanks for the work.

[WanderingZombie]

All new development for us is now on PHP 5.6. Unless people using PHP 5.3 and PHPExcel pay you a handsome sum of money to maintain legacy code, move on and make your life easier. After all, if anyone has to have PHP 5.3 compatibility, they can always fork the 1.x branch and maintain it themselves.

[MarkBaker]

There's certainly a lot of truth in that WanderingZombie, and it's getting more an more tempting to take that approach... 5.6 might be a step too far, but certainly working with the officially supported versions of PHP, and retaining backward compatibility with unsupported versions would simply be a bonus... I'd originally been targeting 5.3 as the minimum release (and the biggest step) but suggesting a minimum of 5.4 as the oldest officially supported version of PHP has benefits as well... and if that pattern of only supporting the currently supported releases of PHP gives a roadmap going forward

[KnightAR]

I've recently ran into this project after being stuck using Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer for the past few years looking for a possible replacement so I may generate proper .xlsx files so I thought i'd throw in my 2 cents. My thought is that 5.2 is just too outdated to support anymore so I agree a minimal version should be upped as 5.3 is a good version to support as the majority of major features happens starting at 5.3.

[Progi1984]

@MarkBaker Pascal MARTIN has released its stats (10/2014) : http://blog.pascal-martin.fr/post/statistiques-versions-php-2014-10 (in french for the moment).