Default PHP module = 7.2 (obsolete)?

Rocky Linux General
1

On Rocky 8, per this RHEL page (enter “php” in the search boxes) it seems the php 7.2 (and 7.3) modules are EOL. php:7.4 is supported through end of 8.x release and php:8.0 goes EOL late this year. The default (even for recent installs) is php:7.2.

# dnf module list php
Last metadata expiration check: 1:11:55 ago on Mon 01 May 2023 09:39:05 AM EDT.
Rocky Linux 8 - AppStream
Name Stream     Profiles                   Summary               
php  7.2 [d][e] common [d], devel, minimal PHP scripting language
php  7.3        common [d], devel, minimal PHP scripting language
php  7.4        common [d], devel, minimal PHP scripting language
php  8.0        common [d], devel, minimal PHP scripting language

This just doesn’t seem proper for the default to be at php:7.2 rather than php:7.4. Sorry I can’t easily check a real RHEL system for comparison.

Perhaps helpful to others: I found dnf module switch-to php:7.4 is a relatively easy way to switch (easier than “reset” followed by “enable” + “distro-sync”).

1 Like
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Unfortunately this is still the default as set by upstream (RHEL). I don’t know (and maybe it’s not clear to most) if they plan on moving defaults around in the future. As far as I can see, the defaults haven’t changed in 8.8 (beta). What it sort of looks like is how RHEL looked pre-modularity, where the default versions never changed (php was one of them, historically).

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OK, thanks! Very happy to see a response from Release Engineering.

For what it’s worth, this came about from a Tenable scan dinging me with a critical about libzip-1.5.1 rather than -1.7.3. Most systems don’t even have PHP installed, but libzip gets pulled in as a dependency for xournalpp.

No doubt libzip-1.5.1 is not supported as part of php:7.2 so it’s fair to pin that on me. Moving to php:7.4 rebases to libzip-1.6.1, which should be supported and acceptable. I have my doubts Tenable will agree…we shall find out! :smiley:

Anyway, thanks again for the confirmation “it is what it is” [upstream].