You are probably also excited about the recent PHP 8 release that is not only bringing a whole load of exciting new features, but astonishing performance improvements as well! And, yes, the Magento framework should onboard this brand new PHP version as soon as possible!
In order to do this, we’ll need to not only work on the Magento codebase, but also update Magento dependencies one by one as soon as they roll out a PHP 8 compatible version.
To ensure that our journey to PHP 8 compatibility is visible and transparent, we are launching the Magento PHP 8 Compatibility Community Project!
In case you’d like to contribute to the project or just watch the progress, you should visit the PHP 8 Compatibility backlog project board. All the issues related to the project can be found there in appropriate statuses/columns. Feel free to self-assign any issue in the Ready for Development and Good First Issue columns. The backlog is going to be topped up with new issues as more PHP 8 compatible Magento dependencies are released.
If you’d like to participate in the project as a maintainer or simply watch the progress of your pull request (PR) being processed, visit the PHP 8 Compatibility PRs project board.
Both project boards display issues and PRs marked with the “Project: PHP8” label, so be sure to use this label if you submit issues/PRs related to the project.
To ensure the flexibility and isolation of the project, we have introduced dedicated mainline branches named “php8-develop” to all Magento project repositories. They are based on the 2.4-develop (or corresponding) branch. If you contribute to the project, create your working branches from “php8-develop” and use it as the base branch for PRs.
Depending on the volume of backward incompatible changes in the php8-develop branch, we will be able to decide if the project can be merged to the 2.4 or 2.5 Magento release line.
Having a separate base branch not only ensures flexibility and controlled isolation of the project, but it will also accelerate pull requests delivery because there is no competing delivery queue!
If you are interested in this initiative, do not hesitate to join the #php8 slack channel in the Magento Community Engineering Slack workspace.
Have a very Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!
