Reconsider PHP 8 requirement

[rvdsteege]

The increased PHP version requirement to 8.0 seems to be causing some issues / frustrations:

Ik vind dat jullie er wel vrij vroeg bij zijn om PHP8 te eisen. Miljoenen websites draaien daar nog niet op.

De host geeft aan dat hun systeem nog niet klaar is voor een PHP update.

On our site, currently the Customizer is broken (it doesn't load). In the error logs I see the followwing:

PHP Fatal error: Uncaught TypeError: Return value of Pronamic\WordPress\Pay\Fields\Field::jsonSerialize() must be an instance of Pronamic\WordPress\Pay\Fields\mixed, array returned in /wp-content/plugins/pronamic-ideal/vendor/wp-pay/core/src/Fields/Field.php:149

Recently, the following error message is displayed for the Pronamic plugin

This plugin does not work with your version of PHP

This is the PHP version running on my server: 7.4.33. Is this PHP version too old to run the plugin?

PHP 7.4 compatibility has already been improved in https://github.com/pronamic/wp-pay-core/commit/b59cc53ae4974de599b4c635651f992173d87007, but maybe we should also reconsider the increased PHP version requirement?

For reference:

• WordPress.org statistics:
  • 56% using PHP 7.4
  • 15% on PHP 8.0 or higher
  • https://wordpress.org/about/stats/
• WooCommerce 7.3.0 requires PHP version 7.2
  • https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce/blob/2de5a8f08657a70987f48421dc43706890b96e4d/plugins/woocommerce/readme.txt#L6
• Yoast SEO increases the PHP requirement to version 7.2 coming March
  • https://yoast.com/developer-blog/notice-increasing-minimum-php-requirement/
• PHP 7.4 has officially reached 'End of life' and is unsupported
  • https://www.php.net/supported-versions.php

Internal Help Scout tickets:

• https://secure.helpscout.net/conversation/2133179817/25099
• https://secure.helpscout.net/conversation/2123834698/25048
• https://secure.helpscout.net/conversation/2128494178/25079
• https://secure.helpscout.net/conversation/2127292448/25074

[remcotolsma]

Because almost no PHP 8+ functionalities are used yet, it seems fine to me to continue to support PHP 7.4 for now. I have already modified the libraries, will patch them shortly.