Using phpcompatibility/php-compatibility version 9.X while with the php >= 8.0, it should be develop branch

[joshirohit100]

https://github.com/PHPCompatibility/PHPCompatibility - Last release of this package was on 5 years back and is 9.3.5

Based on various issues in the https://github.com/PHPCompatibility/PHPCompatibility package, it seems like for php >= 8.0 compatibility, its recommended to use the develop (10) branch but this package seems pinned to version 9 only and not allow to use.

[danepowell]

@TravisCarden you added the php compatibility package and sniff, what do you think? I'm not thrilled about moving a dependency to a dev release.

@joshirohit100 is the current setup causing any specific issue for you? If not, this seems more like a chore than a bug.

[TravisCarden]

I'm not thrilled about moving a dependency to a dev release.

I agree on principle, @danepowell. Even more so in this case as it would involve over 2,000 new commits! Who knows what's happened in that space. (My rule is to not review any diff that crashes my browser. 😛)

The whole value of the library is probably debatable at this point. I'll bet PHPStan has a abetter solution. My inclination would be to deprecate PHPCompatibility and provide documentation for removing it or overriding the version (with inline aliases, I would think) and link to better solutions if we know of any.

[danepowell]

I like the idea of moving compatibility checking out of the coding standards since it doesn't apply equally to all projects. Acquia CLI, for instance, is exempt from PHP 7.4 compatibility in the 2.x release.

Looks like PHPStan is a better candidate to enforce compatibility; the only downside is we don't have a standard PHPStan ruleset, so projects would need to implement this individually: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/75387960/check-code-compatibility-for-different-php-versions

I'd still like to hear from @joshirohit100 on what specific issues, if any, the older version of the phpcompatibility library is causing.

[joshirohit100]

We use this library to check for php compatibility for php upgrade and noticed that if we using the 9.5 version (as with the acquia coding standard), it kind of ignoring the deprecations and checks and give all is fine while if we check same with the dev version, and then shows the issues in scan.

I checked for various scans / threads etc on the repo and its recommended to used (at-least thats what I found) to use dev version (or 10). Example - PHPCompatibility/PHPCompatibility#1358

Sample test - check for php 8.4 comptibilty for the code - with the 9.5 version, all fine while with dev version gives

FOUND 0 ERRORS AND 2 WARNINGS AFFECTING 2 LINES
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 69 | WARNING | Implicitly marking a parameter as nullable is deprecated since PHP 8.4. Update the type to be explicitly nullable instead. Found implicitly nullable parameter: $data.
 71 | WARNING | Implicitly marking a parameter as nullable is deprecated since PHP 8.4. Update the type to be explicitly nullable instead. Found implicitly nullable parameter: $options.

When I tried to upgrade to dev version, I couldn ;t as seems locked by the the acquia package.

[danepowell]

From that issue, it looks like they've been "about to get 10.0 out the door" for over two years now. Hmm.

Anyway... if the maintainer recommends using the develop branch, I'm fine with it in principle. We'll need to evaluate it; we can continue technical discussion in the PR: #76

Long-term, I'd prefer to switch to PHPStan, but I only have a nominal amount of time to contribute to this and that sounds like a lot of work.