Re: Maintaining PHP 5 documentation

On Fri, Dec 4, 2020, 21:03 Christoph M. Becker <[email protected]> wrote:

> On 04.12.2020 at 20:17, Gabriel Caruso wrote:
>
> > On Fri, Dec 4, 2020, 16:14 Gabriel Caruso <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> >
> >> On Fri, Dec 4, 2020, 16:01 Anna Filina <[email protected]> wrote:
> >>
> >>> 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?
> >>> - How much effort does it require to maintain the legacy docs?
> >>> - Are there any associated costs?
> >>
> >> I believe this was the PR archiving it:
> >> https://github.com/php/web-php/pull/341
> >>
> >> I'll check in the mailing list of there's a discussion thread meanwhile.
> >
> > There you go: https://news-web.php.net/php.doc/969387511
>
> That message referred to another thread, which is
> <https://marc.info/?l=phpdoc&m=157659936427907&w=2>.
>
> The basic problem with maintaining documentation for PHP 5 is the
> overhead for maintainers (who are not as numerous as the stars in the
> sky; actually it's more like the number of planets you can see in the
> sky with the naked eye), *and* for most readers (there are sometimes
> long changelog lists, and some notes sprinkled through the text
> regarding behavior as of, or prior to certain PHP versions).


I'm also maintaining some legacy PHP 5.x code and am very upset about this
change. I would not expect anyone to do extra maintenance work, but it
would be very kind if you could republish the old docs as
legacy-docs.php.net or something? It's very handy sometimes to see which
methods and parameters were available in a certain version to know if you
can use them or not. I know it would still be some work to maintain a
separate docs http installation but i think that's a very reasonable
effort? If I can help, I would.