Upcoming PHP 7.4 transition

[Matthias Klose]

On 2/14/20 9:52 AM, Julian Andres Klode wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 13, 2020 at 05:33:21PM -0800, Bryce Harrington wrote:
>> Hi devs,
>>
>> For focal the server team will be transitioning PHP to 7.4 over the
>> coming weeks.
>>
>> Since version 7.0, upstream PHP has adopted a regular release cadence,
>> with one release per year. Each release is supported for 2 years, plus a
>> third year of security critical fixes.[1] Changes from 7.3 to 7.4 are
>> modest, but the extra year of upstream support is a tangible benefit for
>> the Ubuntu LTS.
>>
>> The language binary, php7.4, is already sync'd to universe in focal.
>> Remaining parts of the stack are in process by Debian, but are expected
>> to enter experimental/universe soon.  Initial build testing shows the
>> changes that have been queued in Debian's git package repos have
>> addressed most build issues, and will simply need synced/merged.
> 
> It's stuck in proposed due to failing autopkgtests of reverse
> dependencies, and it also depends on the icu transition. Hopefully
> icu is done soon, I guess I'd wait for this first before entangling
> another transition into it.

waiting is the best way to put that transition at risk.  Just do it and be
prepared to fix unrelated issues in the archive.

Matthias