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Description
It's great to hear that @cpearcey took over the role of Product Manager for PHP Agents.
I'm raising this issue already because on the 25th of November in 2025, PHP 8.5 will likely be released.
I would like to see that New Relic takes the PHP release cycle serious and gets their act together, to ensure compatibility on the release day. For years, this has been a big pain point for many customers out here.
- PHP 8.4 #909 (took 53 days, released 21 November 2024, support added 13 January 2025)
- PHP 8.3 #676 (took 27 days, released 23 November 2023, support added 20 December 2023)
- PHP 8.2 #375 (took 90 days, released 8 December 2022, support added 8 March 2023)
- PHP 8.1 #177 (took 98 days, released 25 November 2021, support added 3 March 2022)
- PHP 8.0 #24 (took 146 days, released 26 November 2020, support added 21 April 2021)
Some idea's on how to improve this:
- Improve communication by openly explaining what is being worked on (instead of linking to private tickets).
- Start testing the beta's and release candidates
- Make sure the changes needed, are already shipped to the main branch when they are ready
- Make it possible to install the agent on the new (unsupported) PHP version with an override. This could allow people to start testing on their side and provide feedback back to you.
I think the last point is crucial, as this would give people the opportunity to just go ahead and run it on their own risk. Especially when NR tested the RC's, this should be doable.
Also, these people will be the first to provide crucial feedback if things are working as expected.