Drop of PHP 8.0 support in Nextcloud 30

🏷️ General
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as a learning from the past when end of support for PHP 7.4 caused many discussion I would like to heads up the admins still running PHP 8.0 to plan an upgrade to a supported version soon.

According to system requirements Nextcloud 31 will Nextcloud 30 does not support PHP 8.0 anymore. Keep in mind PHP 8.0 does not receive security updates since 26 Nov 2023 and this should be a massive security road block for any internet-facing application. Development for PHP 8.1 stopped already but it will receive security patches until 31 Dec 2025

the goal of this post is not to start another flame war about PHP support in LTS and slow moving Linux distributions - the discussion is complete and all arguments have been mentioned in On the roadmap: deprecation of PHP 7.4 My personal opinion is it was an error to keep support of PHP 8.0 in NC31 but it is the case. Previous statement was wrong and PHP 8.0 is not supported with NC30… hopefully NC31 will be the last one supporting PHP 8.1. This just a friendly head up to upgrade your systems - and not only PHP but everything (I know you do :wink: )

php80 nc31 php84

Updated reference and versions

another news: 🚀 PHP 8.4 has arrived in master (to be Nextcloud 31 Hub 10) of Nextcloud Server

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do you have any idea when nc31 will be released

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Thanks for the info. Perhaps you can also write somewhere in the instructions e.g. requirements what the default PHP versions of the respective Ubuntu and Debian releases are. Then perhaps users would simply upgrade the operating system including PHP and not only PHP.

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS: PHP 7.4
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS: PHP 8.1
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS: PHP 8.3

Debian 11 Bullseye (release year 2021): PHP 7.4
Debian 12 Bookworm (release year 2023): PHP 8.2

Now is the time to upgrade to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS / 24.04 LTS or Debian 12 Bookworm. This will solve the PHP problem by itself. Yes, there are exceptions for long term support (+ 2 years or more) of old operating system versions . But normal end users tend not to be affected by the exceptions and experts tend to know what they are doing.

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The documentation for Nextcloud 30 says that already Nextcloud 30 does not support PHP 8.0: System requirements — Nextcloud latest Administration Manual latest documentation
Is this a “bug” in the documentation? I am running Nextcloud only on PHP 8.2 and can’t proof…

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Nope, PHP 8.0 support was dropped in NC 30 already, see:

and

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Nah, I don’t think so, probably an oversight by @wwe

Anyway, the main point of his post is that PHP 8.0 is EOL and should generally not be used anymore, so it doesn’t really matter whether it would still work with Nextcloud 30 or not :wink:

And in general, of course, it’s best to use the versions recommended by Nextcloud, rather than the oldest version that’s still supported, or the latest version that’s not yet recommended or supported.

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I have to admit I didn’t check carefully for NC30 as it is released already… but now after triple checking the docs there is in fact some bug in the docs… the NC30 link from https://docs.nextcloud.com/ refers to https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/stable/admin_manual/ which lists PHP 8.0 as supported but deprecated and NC31 is latest without PHP 8.0… but the beforementioned https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/30/admin_manual/ in fact refers to latest.

I followed the lazy path :man_facepalming: additionally multiple BRs related to PHP 8.0 where still open yesterday Deprecation and removal of PHP8.0 support · Issue #36437 · nextcloud/server · GitHub and Prepare for PHP 8.0 end of life · Issue #40636 · nextcloud/server · GitHub so both sources made a perfect match. And at the end “code is law” and “stable30” doesn’t support PHP8.0 as per reference Deprecation and removal of PHP8.0 support · Issue #36437 · nextcloud/server · GitHub.

Back to start - PHP8.0 stopped receiving security updates an nobody should use it. PHP 8.1 will stop receiving security updates by the end of 2025, so update to at least PHP 8.2 is recommended.

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That indeed seems weird, I’ll check that.

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I think the issue is that https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/stable/admin_manual/ links to to either the 28 or 29 docs, instead of 30 as it should be:

(it’s not quite clear from the links below whether it’s 28 or 29, as there seems to be no extra release notes section for 29)

Release notes stable:

https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/stable/admin_manual/release_notes/index.html

Release notes 28:

https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/28/admin_manual/release_notes/index.html

Release notes 29:

https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/29/admin_manual/release_notes/index.html

Release notes 30:

https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/30/admin_manual/release_notes/index.html

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Most likely not. All versions that receive security updates are planned to stay supported.
No one forces you to stay on the old version. There is a clear warning in the admin settings if you do so.

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The stable symlink was adjusted, thanks to @nickvergessen

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No matter what the docs say, 8.0 has been end-of-life for a year.

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