Re: Maintaining PHP 5 documentation

On Fri, 4 Dec 2020 at 19:01, Anna Filina <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi team,
>
> I landed on this plain 404 page yesterday:
> https://www.php.net/manual/en/ini.sect.safe-mode.php#ini.safe-mode
>
> I was told that the PHP 5 docs are in the process of being removed from
> php.net. This is not ideal for me as I maintain and migrate legacy
> applications for a living.
>
> I would like to understand the reasoning behind this decision and perhaps
> offer some help to remedy the situation:
> - Are there any inherent problems with keeping the legacy docs online?
>

We don't have multiple copies of the docs so everything lives on one page.
There is an archive of the PHP Documentation before we started removing
mentions of it.
Akin to how the PHP 4 docs are handled.



> - How much effort does it require to maintain the legacy docs?
>

Because everything is on one page, maintaining accurate docs for the range
PHP 5 - 8
is rather impractical, many things changed, functions got removed,
functions had drastic
behavioural changes, etc.


> - Are there any associated costs?
>

The human cost of needing to maintain such a large range of versions and to
maintain
and clarify docs which are only relevant to PHP 5 when we could spend our
time on
more productive things.
Secondly removing docs alleviates the burden on translations.


> Thanks,
> Anna Filina
> https://twitter.com/afilina (DMs are open)
>

Hope this clarifies some of it.

Best regards,

George P. Banyard