Re: Maintaining PHP 5 documentation

Thanks for such a detailed answer!

Would it make sense for someone to maintain a completely separate manual
specifically for those retired docs?

Advantages:
- The rest of the team could maintain only docs for the current versions.
- The legacy docs would still be online, searchable and linkable.

I can find the resources necessary to make this work.

Anna

On Fri, Dec 4, 2020 at 2:24 PM G. P. B. <[email protected]> wrote:

> 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
>