When can we expect 8.2 support? The fact that we’re still waiting for this is troubling when I thought the whole idea of re-doing how the PHP versions were handled was so that we can get PHP versions before they are out on production.
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Hi @arecian - thanks for popping into the forums! I’m going to move this over to our Feature Requests category and update the title so that we can group requests for PHP 8.2.
Short answer: this project is next up on our list and we’ll be starting after our next release (
out for that soon). Since it is a minor version bump from the last PHP release, it should be more straightforward than when we released PHP 8.0.
Longer answer: Our roadmap follows a Now, Next, Later format internally, and the top of our Next column is:
- PHP 8.2 support, and
- Modernizing the Connect to WP Engine workflow, as this requires a separate binary that ships with Local and isn’t API-driven like you’d expect.
This means once we complete our current work (next release), this is where we head next. We’re working on finding a way to make our roadmap more public so that users have a better idea of what to expect (if you have examples of other tools you use that have done this and that you like, let me know!).
Related to the effort - we’ve also been trying internally to dual-track some community efforts to get the “beta support” tag removed from PHP 8/8.1/8.2 on WordPress. As you can imagine, that is an uphill battle. To date, getting enough community support to get that over the hump has been tough. PHP Compatibility and WordPress Versions – Make WordPress Core. We’ll keep working with our Developer Relations team and the WordPress community where it makes sense, but if you have ideas on how we can continue pushing that discussion in the right direction, let me know!
Thanks for the update, Austin. For those of us that use Local to make sure our WordPress products are compatible with PHP versions as they are released, it’s really important to have them available sooner rather than later so it’s great to know it’s on the priority list and is coming in the next couple months (I hope, that’s me looking at when prior releases have come out).
As for the WP beta support, I checked the Make blog and didn’t see any dev notes in regards to PHP version for the upcoming WP release this month but I have seen people inquire about that in #core in the WP slack and get some responses so maybe have your developer relations team try that (if they haven’t already).
I think that having support in tools like Local is a vital part of making progress on efforts like this. Local is used by developers who are working toward things like full PHP 8.0/8.1/8.2 compatibility, so not having access to them in the Local environment can slow that down.
That’s why I’m glad we’ve got 8.0 & 8.1 right now, and I’m really looking forward to 8.2. Glad to hear 8.2 support is next on the roadmap!
That said, it would be helpful to have access to the latest versions of 8.0 and 8.1. Currently we have the 04 August 2022 releases 8.0.22 and 8.1.9 (most recent are 8.0.28 and 8.1.16, released 14 Feb 2023). I’d prefer not to be six months out of date on bugfixes in my dev environment.
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(Can I also pop in here and remind you when you’re building PHP 8.2 (and hopefully 8.1 and 8.0) to include all the necessary libraries - including imagick. Thanks!)
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I’d like to add that this should be highest priority as PHP 8.2 continues the trend of changing warnings into Fatal errors. PHP 8.x releases are really unlike most other PHP releases and it really hurts those of us who use Local for our daily development and we are already well past the stage of needing to be fully compatible with PHP 8.2. 
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Couldn’t agree more! The PHP versions need to be out in advance of them being released or at least very shortly after or how are we to stay on top of things? It’s been out for months at this point.
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