Warning - this package will be deprecated on 17 March 2024

[matthewbdaly]

DEPRECATION NOTICE

Microsoft have announced the retirement of the Azure Storage PHP client on 17 March 2024. Off the back of this Frank de Jonge, who maintains the Flysystem library and the Azure Storage integration for it, has announced that the Azure Storage integration, will no longer be maintained as of the same date.

This package is entirely dependent on the Azure Storage integration, and by extension the Microsoft client libraries. As such, maintaining it past that point will be impractical. In addition, I myself have never had the occasion to use this package, and only wound up using Azure once when a client insisted on it. I've therefore decided this package will also be retired as at the same date.

If you're using it now, I suggest you consider migrating your existing application off Azure Storage sometime in the next year. If not, you will need to make alternative arrangements for interacting with the REST API.

[lrljoe]

I have a horrible feeling that I'm going to end up writing and supporting a "Flysystem driver" (ish) for this using the REST APIs, as there are clients on AzureGov with no chance of using anything else.

Either that or I'll get the clients to apply pressure to MSFT, I imagine apoplectic will be an understatement from their viewpoint.
I believe but am not certain that they have requirements written into contracts, so I may be able to maintain a community fork off the back of that.

If I do then I'll update here, happy to fork this if necessary

[matthewbdaly]

@lrljoe I'll be happy to link from this repository to any alternative implementation that might appear. When the time comes I will be marking this package as abandoned so if an alternative is available at that time, I will be happy to update the composer.json to recommend it as an alternative too.

[lrljoe]

Community supported approach here:

.https://github.com/Azure-OSS/azure-storage-php

Namespace updates and doc updates are still happening

Think there will be a few different maintainers to ensure support continues.

[matthewbdaly]

@lrljoe Good to hear.

It would still need a replacement for the Flysystem Azure integration as well. Given that I haven't used Azure Storage for a long time, I don't plan to maintain this beyond that point regardless, but if someone wants to fork it or write a similar adapter for a similar community maintained Flysystem driver I'm happy to endorse it and mark it as the officially sanctioned replacement for this package, and assist with the transition.

[lrljoe]

I'll add the flysystem requirement into the new project and see whether there's scope or just lift and shift the existing repo and renamespace.

When that happens, are you happy for the same to be done for this repo?

It's all going to be kept fully open source, and I imagine it'll grow with time with requirements

[matthewbdaly]

Yes, that's fine.

[mwlvandermaat]

I read above that @lrljoe will continue to develop further on the new Community Supported approach at https://github.com/Azure-OSS/azure-storage-php. @lrljoe Will you forking a new project, and when do you expect to have it available?

[matthewbdaly]

I personally don't plan to continue working on this past that point. I have never actually used this package myself in production and it's been nearly a decade since I used Azure Blob Storage professionally so it seemed like an appropriate time to withdraw from it.