drop PHP 5 support

[KEINOS]

As of 2025/03/30, the upstream Parsedown supports PHP >=7.1. We should drop older versions than PHP 7.0 and follow/refactor to keep the package fresh.

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As an old-timer, I have always appreciated the stability that dead technology brings. I was also aesthetically pleased that this package supported PHP 5 through latest.

Lately, however, I've turned my attention to other programming languages and personally moved away from PHP, not because I don't like it, but because it works fine when left alone and only needs occasional maintenance to keep it from breaking. In other words, I wasn't thrilled.

Then, before PHP8 was released, shortly before Fediverse and AI became a hot topic, I saw engineers who were trying to develop new SNS and AI libraries in PHP being burnt out (crushed and mentally scarred) by the unique atmosphere created by the old guard of the PHP community. I lost interest.

However, as I gained experience with other programming languages, I realized the frequency of maintenance due to their newness and the importance of trying new things and “failing fast” to stay motivated. To be honest, I think I was also conservative. I will try to commit to PHP again in my own way, albeit in a blah way, after all this time.

[DigitalSorceress]

Totally understand, and agree:
If the upstream Parsedown and ParsedownExtra projects are >= 7.1, then it makes sense to drop the older stuff.

I checked PHP Supported Versions and it seems 8.1 is the oldest supported version that is actively being patched.

That being the case, it might be worth going to >= 8.1?

I mean in theory you do want to be compatible with the library you're an extension to... and this might have weird consequences.

Either way though I agree that it really does feel like its long past time to say goodbye to PHP5.

Regarding upstream package

I had my own recent confusion with parsedown versions - I had grabbed 1.8.0-beta7 and had been riffing on that (in a totally bad way to fork a repo if I'm honest) and then seeing the last package was 1.7.4 fron 2019 though the repo had taken changes up to 1.8.0-beta6 and kind of rolled them into whatever it's calling 1.8.0... I

I should say I really love parsedown and am not wanting to throw any shade here - but from the practical standpoint of this repo being an extension to it and parsedown-extra the degree of active maintenance on upstream and the somewhat confusing versioning I hit,

I guess my TL;DR: would be

support >=7.1, but make sure nothing breaks with >=8.1 since best practice would be to use the supported versions

Philosophy

I feel you on the small-c conservative approach - I tend to be "old lady who yells at clouds" with regard to change for change sake. However, the security landscape is so incredibly dynamic I'm kind of at the "If it goes out there for others to build on, it probably needs to stay with current branches.

There is an XKCD for every situation: