PHP 8.2

[ruudk]

Summary

PHP 8.2 will be released at the end of 2022.

Desired Behavior

For PHP 8.1 it took 97 days to have compatibility after the official release. Let's try to get compatibility for PHP 8.2 faster than that.

How?

Start testing the nightly builds, alpha's, beta's, RC's, as soon as they are released.

Let people run the extension on unreleased PHP versions so that you can gather faster feedback. For example, I'm sure there are daredevils that run the RC's in production.

[rvanlaak]

Hi all, daredevil here!

We reached PHP 8.2 beta phase and thereby feature freeze already is some weeks behind us.

https://php.watch/news/2022/05/php-82-release-managers

Any update on the progress of letting the NewRelic PHP agent support 8.2?

As NewRelic is a hard dependency on infra level, it would thereby be great that we can prevent the release story of the last several years. Happy to support with testing!

[adri]

We're ready to test out PHP 8.2-RC releases, but we're blocked by the New Relic agent not being ready. Any updates on PHP 8.2 support? Also left a comment on the discussion platform for visibility.

[ruudk]

@misiekn @zsistla @mfulb

It would be great if there was a way to force install the extension on a non-supported future PHP version (like 8.2 RC).

[mbabker]

Is there any update on this? The 3rd release candidate has been tagged and it doesn't look like there has been any activity on this repo regarding PHP 8.2 support.

[rvanlaak]

Last RC before GA will be tagged in two days, looking forward to an update on the progress!

[ruudk]

I think we'll just have to wait another 3 more months after the release before New Relic finally catches up.... and the same will happen next release, and the release after... 🤦

[rvanlaak]

RC.6 was released, and based on the announcement and the current state of the wiki it seems that an additional RC.7 was included during the release cycle on November 24th: https://www.php.net/archive/2022.php#2022-11-10-1

Would be great if initial PHP Agent testing did happen before GA to help the PHP 8.2 Release Managers in the case bugs would get found.

[mbabker]

As is normal procedure with all PHP releases, the git tag was created yesterday ahead of tomorrow's planned release. And, as has been the case for the last several "major" PHP releases, the New Relic team has put zero effort into launch day compatibility (even though there are 4 months of beta and RC releases). This is actually becoming quite disappointing and is making me question whether we need to look for alternative solutions in 2023.

[ruudk]

I feel you @mbabker, but they don't care. This has been their workflow for years now 😫

[seanhamlin]

PHP 8.2 is now GA https://www.php.net/archive/2022.php#2022-12-08-1

[heldchen]

is PHP support for newrelic abandoned?

• issues are not triaged
• updates are not planned
• support & team are not reacting

[gael-donat]

Look like they have too many customers.

[mbabker]

is PHP support for newrelic abandoned?

• issues are not triaged
• updates are not planned
• support & team are not reacting

I'm not happy about the current situation with the lack of PHP 8.2 support, but let's also be fair here instead of making over-reaching statements:

• Version 10.4 was just tagged on Friday
• There have been several updates released this year (https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/release-notes/agent-release-notes/php-release-notes/)
• There are a number of PRs with somewhat regular activity on this repo (what exactly they're doing, I have no idea)

Your assessment of issues not being triaged and support lacking is also pretty fair. From the outside looking in, it looks like the only things getting attention on this repository are things that are internally (as in not even visible on the public project board) planned. There seems to be a major lack of response from consumers of the agent (be it free users or paying customers), and that lack of response is honestly the most frustrating thing for me as the developer who recommended a paid subscription for New Relic to one of our largest clients.

Companies such as New Relic are in a position where they really should be forward planning regarding next-version support in their tools, and I believe this is important given the types of integrations their tools provide and the compromises that lack of forward planning forces onto organizations to make if they decide to move forward with an upgrade without New Relic integrations being active. So seeing that they have made zero effort to implement that next version compatibility for the last 3 PHP releases until well after release day has passed really starts to get frustrating.

[heldchen]

@mbabker with updates are not planned I meant php updates and was not refering to agent updates, should have been more clear about that: 8.2 development code has been available in a more or less "final" state for months now (at least in regards of scope and included features), yet there does not even seem to have been any sort of planning to implement this (which was at least done for the 8.0 and 8.1 in advance of its release).

There seems to be a major lack of response from consumers of the agent

I tried - my bug report from a few months ago is still untouched. sure it's not a showstoper bug, but it's also kind of becoming clear to me that they are not looking for active participation of customers in these sort of matters and would rather have us stick to their weird support forum if at all.

[Ak-x]

Thank you all for your feedback. PHP 8.2 support is a priority item on our roadmap. The work to add support for PHP 8.2 has started, however, we are unable to provide a date when an agent with PHP 8.2 support will be available.

We additionally are planning a closed beta program to improve future releases of our agent and encourage collaboration from the community. If you are interested we suggest filing a ticket by following the steps here, where we can engage our General Tech Support engineers.

If you do not have access to this support flow & the ability to open a support ticket directly, we can reach out via a post on the NR Community Forums.

[adri]

@Ak-x Thank you so much for your reaction. It means a lot to me to see communication around this topic. It's great to hear that PHP 8.2 has priority and work has started. Just created a support ticket to indicate interest 👍

[rvanlaak]

@Ak-x given it has been three weeks that work has started, can you give an update on the work being done and an ETA?

[Ak-x]

Hello @rvanlaak.

The recommendation is to sign-up for the Beta in order to receive updated builds and provide feedback ahead of our official release. 8.2 support will be available via beta before it is available via a public release. We are hopeful that through the collaboration with participants in the beta, we will have a more robust public release.
cc: @ak-war

[rvanlaak]

My question is not to receive updated builds or to provide feedback, the question is on info about the work that is being done and whether a possible ETA is known already.
For years, this approach of being late with providing support is annoying many paying customers. Providing clarity also does not happen via the private forum, and it also does not make sense to do that there as your customers live over here, on Github. Please step up your game, this is blocking teams.

Ref. to the topic you referrered to 3 weeks ago: https://discuss.newrelic.com/t/php-support-for-php-8-2/189490/8

Here at New Relic, we’ve recently made the shift to prioritize supporting new versions of core technologies for all of our agents. This includes language runtimes, and you can expect us to accelerate timely support of new versions. Once again, your feedback is helpful in showing that timely support is essential to customers and that we should continue to make it a priority for all of our agent teams. I’ll also bring this to the attention of the PHP agent product manager.

[alcohol]

@Ak-x where can I sign up for this beta?

[ruudk]

Why is this beta sign-up only btw? What's so special about it? PHP 8.2 is not that big of a release when compared to the jump from 7.4 to 8.0. Why not just develop this in the open, and push it to main or some develop branch, and let people build from there. This sucks on so many levels.

[ak-war]

@alcohol If you are interested in joining the Beta we suggest signing up here. We will subsequently reach out by email at the start of the beta phase for the feature/fix.

@ruudk Currently the closed beta allows us to gather more consistent feedback for the Php Agent, we are evaluating the opportunity to migrate our beta program to the public.

[alcohol]

@ak-war does this mean the beta is closed..?

[ak-war]

@alcohol sorry about that, it is fixed now. Please try again.

[beeyev]

Is there any update? PHP 8.2 was released for a while already. We are ready to upgrade the PHP version, only newrelic is keeping us down.

[rvanlaak]

Can't really imagine, but would this PR on adding 8.2 to the Makefile possibly really be the only thing needed to add PHP 8.2 support? 😱 Curious to hear more!

[rvanlaak]

Oh, and it looks like there is some activity in the php-82 branch, but does NewRelic really think that we are impatient, given the new suggested codename of agent 10.6 as seen in the related PR? ;-)

[ajbonner]

Just flagging interest in a resolution here - paying customer deploying to PHP 8.2 and now without php instrumentation.

[adri]

There seems to be a milestone here https://github.com/newrelic/newrelic-php-agent/milestone/28

[rvanlaak]

Anyone ever heard anything back again about their subscription to the beta form? We all are being kept in the dark, so the longer it takes it seems that we are getting shipped off with false hope?

In order to keep adding context; PHP 8.1 active support is already going to end in 9 months ;-)

[ruudk]

In order to keep adding context; PHP 8.1 active support is already going to end in 9 months ;-)

@rvanlaak That reminds me, I should create an issue to tell the team about PHP 8.3

[adri]

Looks like the milestone is complete, wonder what that means? Does that mean that the start of the beta phase is coming up? @ak-war
I wish there was more transparency.

Btw, I was triggered by a "what's new" message in the New Relic UI showing this... kind of got excited that we can finally proceed with upgrading to PHP 8.2

[frank-laemmer]

Latest release (two weeks ago) not listing PHP 8.2:
https://github.com/newrelic/newrelic-php-agent/releases/tag/v10.6.0.318

Not listing PHP 8.2 yet:
https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/apm/agents/php-agent/getting-started/php-agent-compatibility-requirements/

Where to check for updates?

[mbabker]

Considering the milestone still has open pull requests, I'd say that support's not yet complete.

And considering that New Relic is aiming to funnel folks into a closed beta testing program, my guess is that there won't be any public updates outside of watching the activity on this repository and seeing a release was tagged.

[ajbonner]

I did get this on twitter - https://twitter.com/newrelic/status/1628821935563083776

8.2 support is expected in the coming month.

[rvanlaak]

PRs #627 and #621 that were merged two days ago look a bit promising though.

[rvanlaak]

I'm not entirely sure what suddenly happened, but it seems that PHP 8.2 support silently has been released, as #627 was merged to main through a Release 10.7 PR, and seems to have first appeared in git tag v10.7.0.319 🎉 (no git release with details yet, but the PR with changes to the documentation also was merged).

[rvanlaak]

The NR download archive does not contain the 10.7 installer yet, so you really might be dreaming. For me the CI build pipeline because of that is silently (🤷) passing without an agent. Would expect a faulty installation to lead to an exception code:

[deefour]

Would expect a faulty installation to lead to an exception code

I learned this the hard way last year, unintentionally "muting" all metrics because CD pipeline passed while missing a compatible NewRelic agent after a PHP upgrade.

[bduranleau-nr]

Closing- PHP 8.2 Support is now available in the new 10.7.0 Release.