Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: [RFC] Deprecations for PHP 8.6

On 7-7-2026 18:28, Rowan Tommins [IMSoP] wrote:
> On 7 July 2026 16:40:00 BST, "Gina P. Banyard" <[email protected]> wrote:
>> There are no guidelines on what constitutes a "impact assessment".
>> Especially as qualitative assessments or the cost of keeping it in the language seem to not count.
> I deliberately did not use the words "impact assessment". I said the proposals did not include "any analysis or discussion of the impact on existing code".
>
> I'm not talking about proposals where the discussion of impact doesn't meet some particular threshold. I'm talking about proposals where there's not even a single sentence discussing it. No attempt to think about who it might affect. Not even a wild guess.
>
> I do not think we should be removing features without thinking about who will be affected. I'm honestly shocked that that's a controversial opinion

My offer to assist with creating some insights into the potential impact 
of the proposed deprecations still stands.

I believe that by strategically using the PHPCompatibility library [1], 
creating this type of insight should be fairly straight-forward for ~25 
out of the current 36 proposals.
The only reason I haven't done so yet, is that it's pretty 
time-consuming to run PHPCompatibility over large data sets and there 
are more things on my to-do list than just this.

Side-note: Gina - I do see and appreciate the (hidden) costs of keeping 
certain features in the language. But costs goes both ways (cost of 
deprecating something across the ecosystem versus the costs of continued 
maintenance of the feature in the language).

Smile,
Juliette

1: https://github.com/PHPCompatibility/PHPCompatibility