Re: Maintaining PHP 5 documentation

Andreas Heigl <[email protected]> Fri, 4 Dec 2020 19:52:45 +0000 (UTC)
Newsgroups	gmane.comp.php.documentation.general
Message-ID	<[email protected]>
We could think about building docs for a certain tag/revision or branching of a PHP5 (as well as a PHP7?) release branch for the docs as well. And then build the docs from those branches.

Cheers

Andreas

04.12.2020 20:46:55 Anna Filina <[email protected]>:

> 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[http://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
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