If you’re unfamiliar with PHP, it is a scripting language that is popular amongst developers because of its general purpose flexibility. It has become particularly popular amongst web developers. In a blog post on PHP lists, Microsoft engineer Dale Hirt confirmed the decision. Hirt leads support of PHP within Microsoft and he said version 8.0 will not be supported. “We are committed to maintaining development and building of PHP on Windows for 7.2, 7.3 and 7.4 as long as they are officially supported. We are not, however, going to be supporting PHP for Windows in any capacity for version 8.0 and beyond,” wrote Hirt. As you can see, Hirt says Microsoft’s PHP support through Windows will continue as long as the mentioned builds are supported. That means time is running out across the board. For example, PHP 7.2 will reach the end of its official support in November.
Moving On
During that same month, PHP 7.3 will move to only receiving security fixes. PHP 7.4 has one year remaining for bug fixes, and another year for security fixes. As the PHP community moves full steam ahead with version 8.0, it is leaving those older builds behind. When that happens, Microsoft’s Windows support for the language will cease. However, as ZDNet reports, core developer Sara Golemon says Microsoft ending support does not mean Windows won’t work with PHP 8. “This message means Microsoft aren’t going to produce official builds for PHP 8 onwards,” said Golemon in a Reddit post. “This message does NOT mean that nobody will. “Most likely the project will dust off a machine somewhere in the cloud running Windows (likely using a free license generously provided by Microsoft, btw) and setup some automated build processes to make these ‘inhouse’. “We’re still in initial reaction phase here. The bottom line is there will likely be very little change for Windows users.”
