Call for testing: PHP 8.0

Welcome!

The WordPress coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. development team builds WordPress! Follow this site for general updates, status reports, and the occasional code debate. There’s lots of ways to contribute:

Found a bugbug A bug is an error or unexpected result. Performance improvements, code optimization, and are considered enhancements, not defects. After feature freeze, only bugs are dealt with, with regressions (adverse changes from the previous version) being the highest priority.? Create a ticket in our bug tracker.

Want to contribute? Get started quickly with our tickets marked as good first bugs for new contributors or join a bug scrub. There’s more on our reports page, like patches needing testing.

Other questions? We also have a detailed handbook for contributors, complete with tutorials.

A long-standing goal of the WordPress project is to be compatible with new versions of PHP on their release day. The next major version of PHP (version 8.0) is currently scheduled for release on November 26, 2020. WordPress Core contributorsCore Contributors Core contributors are those who have worked on a release of WordPress, by creating the functions or finding and patching bugs. These contributions are done through Trac. https://core.trac.wordpress.org. are working to ensure PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 8.0 is supported in the next major version of WordPress (version 5.6), which is currently scheduled to be released on December 8, 2020.

PHP 8.0 has been in the making for some time and brings a lot of exciting features. But because PHP 8.0 is a major version release, it also includes some backward incompatible changes. Because of this, a great deal of both manual and automated testing is needed in order to ensure the WordPress CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. codebase is ready for PHP 8.0.

Even though WordPress 5.6 will add support for PHP 8.0, no changes will be made to the minimum required version of PHP at this time. Any changes made to provide support for PHP 8.0 will be done in a way that maintains backward compatibility for all versions of PHP supported by WordPress (currently to PHP 5.6.20).

Your help is needed to test WordPress on PHP 8.0! While contributors are working on addressing incompatibilities that can be identified by looking at the PHP release notes and upgrade guides, some issues will need to be found through manually testing.

Timeline for testing

Since changes for PHP 8.0 compatibility may be extensive, November 17, 2020 (the current planned date for 5.6 RC 1) should be seen as the cut off date for the change to be included in WordPress 5.6. To ensure that changes receive proper testing, patches and pull requests should be submitted as soon as possible.

How to test WordPress on PHP 8.0

There are a few ways that you can test WordPress on PHP 8.0. Some more experienced developers may prefer to install PHP 8.0 manually on their own. But below are instructions for what is likely the quickest and easiest way for most contributors to get set up with PHP 8.

Local WordPress Core Docker environment

The WordPress development repository includes the tools needed to easily spin up a local Docker environment for developing WordPress. Here’s how to get started using this method.

Make sure Docker is installed on your machine and running.
Checkout the development repo using GIT or SVN.
Edit the .env file in the clone to change LOCAL_PHP=latest to LOCAL_PHP=8.0-fpm (or run export LOCAL_PHP=8.0-fpm in the command line window you are using). If you like to test locally using the build directory, also change LOCAL_DIR to build (or run export LOCAL_DIR=build).
Install NPM dependencies by running npm install.
Build WordPress using npm run build:dev (or npm run build if you prefer to test locally using the build directory)
Start the Docker environment by running npm run env:start.
Install WordPress in the Docker container by running npm run env:install.

You will then be able to access the site at localhost:8889 in your browser. As new development versions of PHP 8 are released (rc2, rc3, etc.), the containers will be updated. To ensure you are running the latest version of the PHP 8 container, you can run npm run env:pull. It is recommended that you do this before starting the container anytime you are testing WordPress on PHP 8.

More information on the local Docker setup for developing WordPress can be found in the initial Make Core blog post.

Ways to test

Use WordPress to test default Core functionality.
Write new unit tests that confirm specific PHP 8.0 features or breaking changes work (or don’t) as expected.
Write new tests for areas of the codebase that does not have sufficient test coverage.
Test your favorite plugins and themes for issues.

Reporting issues

If you discover something that you believe to be a PHP 8 compatibility issue, please create a bugbug A bug is an error or unexpected result. Performance improvements, code optimization, and are considered enhancements, not defects. After feature freeze, only bugs are dealt with, with regressions (adverse changes from the previous version) being the highest priority. report on the WordPress Core instance of Trac. Because this is an ongoing effort, it’s possible an issue you have found is already being tracked, is currently being worked on, or has already been fixed. To avoid duplicate reports, please look through pre-existing tickets. The best way to do this is by looking at tickets with the php8 keyword.

Please be sure to provide as many details as you can when creating a ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. and provide steps that are as specific as possible so that other contributors can quickly and easily reproduce the problem.

More ways to help

Head over to the php8 keyword report on WordPress Trac and find a ticket that interests you.
Give feedback, write a patchpatch A special text file that describes changes to code, by identifying the files and lines which are added, removed, and altered. It may also be referred to as a diff. A patch can be applied to a codebase for testing., or test a patch!
Inform others that help is needed to test WordPress on PHP 8.0.

To ensure changes receive the necessary testing, it’s best to fix PHP 8.0 compatibility issues as early as possible during the WordPress development schedule. The 5.6 RC1 date (November 17th, 2020) should be considered the final cut off for changes. If additional critical PHP 8.0 issues are found during the RC period, they should receive tickets and patches and will be evaluated on a case by case basis. But, they will not be guaranteed to make the 5.6 release (usually, only regressions are addressed during the RC period).

For more information on the WordPress 5.6 release cycle schedule, please visit the WordPress 5.6 Development Cycle page on this site..

Thanks in advance for your help preparing WordPress for PHP 8.0!

Props @sergeybiryukov, @daisyo, @desrosj, and @andreamiddleton for proofreading and peer review.

#php, #testing

Mike Schroder 8:53 am on October 7, 2020

Thanks much for putting this together!
Javier Casares 9:55 am on October 10, 2020

Also, I saw that “ondrej” has published a RC1 for PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 8 in its “QA channel”.

So, with add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php-qa you should get PHP 8 for Ubuntu easily.
- Jonathan Desrosiers 5:21 pm on November 3, 2020
  
  Thanks for pointing that out, @javiercasares. It’s never a bad thing to document different ways for people to test.
Suanlian Tangpua 10:11 am on October 29, 2020

Great initiative! I have used in one of my dev site (php 8).
ma0sm 8:38 am on November 3, 2020

I was wondering if anyone here could help me.

I’m trying to install a separate docker instance of WordPress locally so I can have a parallel PHP8, bleeding-edge version of WP running parallel to my existing production version instance.

I used this guide to set it up, and in most ways, it appears to work… However, I have two problems.

One is that I can’t connect to the DB in Sequel Pro using the credentials set in my wp-config file.

The other (probably from the same cause) is that my wordpress-develop_cli_1 service also fails to start due to a db server connection issue.

I can connect to wp-adminadmin (and super admin) fine through my browser with the default credentials, it just seems to be something wrong with my DB connection credentials. If I change the values in my config file, it won’t start at all, so I know I’m making my changes in the right place, but no matter what I try, I cannot get it to connect.

A colleague of mine tried using this guide too, entirely independently of me, and faced the same problems.
- Jonathan Desrosiers 5:01 pm on November 3, 2020
  Hi @ma0sm,
  
  Great question! I had not tried to get this working before, but after a little digging, I was able to get Sequel Pro to connect to the MySQLMySQL MySQL is a relational database management system. A database is a structured collection of data where content, configuration and other options are stored. https://www.mysql.com/. container successfully.
  
  These are the credentials I used:
  - Host: 0.0.0.0
  - Username: root
  - Password: password
  - Port: 49156
  I believe that these should remain the same when using the Docker setup that is included in trunk. In case these do not work and are different for you locally, I was able to figure out the host and port by running docker ps (after starting the setup by running npm run env:start) to see all of the running containers. In the PORTS column, you should see something like 33060/tcp, 0.0.0.0:49156->3306/tcp. The 0.0.0.0:49156 part will tell you how to connect to the container.
  
  Another way you can verify is to run docker inspect containername. In my instance, the name was wordpress-develop_mysql as that was the folder my repository was in. You can find the container name by opening the Docker dashboard, or using the docker ps command in the previous paragraph. In the JSONJSON JSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, as an alternative to XML. output of this command, you’ll find a NetworkSettings key with networknetwork (versus site, blog) information. In there, is a Ports key that details the HostIp and HostPort, which can be copied directly into those fields in Sequel Pro.
  
  Hope this helps! I’m going to make sure this gets added to the documentation for using the local Docker environment when that finally gets published as well!

WordPress.org

Welcome!

Communication

Call for testing: PHP 8.0

Timeline for testing

How to test WordPress on PHP 8.0

Local WordPress Core Docker environment

Ways to test

Reporting issues

More ways to help

WordPress.org

Welcome!

Communication

Timeline for testing

How to test WordPress on PHP 8.0

Local WordPress Core Docker environment

Ways to test

Reporting issues

More ways to help

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