Composer can not install on PHP 5.5.x (tested 5.5.13) - reopened see #403

[joshua-graham-adelphi]

not sure how to reopen an issue. see #403

[geerlingguy]

PHP 5.5 has not been receiving security support for over a year, and even 5.6 will be end-of-lifed in less than 20 days. Drupal 7 somewhat supports older versions still, but it's extremely highly-recommended to not use an unsupported/old PHP version if at all possible.

If this project's goal is to help in bootstrapping new Drupal projects, there's even more motivation to use a supported PHP version.

Currently Drupal 8 also supports 5.5 and 5.6, but that lifeline will also be gone once 8.7.0 is released on March 6, 2019... so I wouldn't expect anyone to try doing any work to make any of the dependencies which are not currently backwards-compatible with PHP 5.6 backwards-compatible for just a few months of support for an unsupported PHP version.

[leymannx]

I must apologize upfront for the following heretical question:

Why on earth would you try to install Drupal 8 on a PHP version that reached end-of-life more than two years ago?

A release that is no longer supported. Users of this release should upgrade as soon as possible, as they may be exposed to unpatched security vulnerabilities.

• PHP Supported Versions
• PHP Unsupported Branches

While Drupal 8 still may support an outdated PHP version some dependencies listed in this Composer project may already have dropped it. I guess your best bet is to download the mere Zip on https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal and start your project from there (not recommended) or to upgrade your PHP version (recommended).

[joshua-graham-adelphi]

Hi @geerlingguy & @leymannx

I do concur with your opinion, however, the project page implies that the project should run on PHP 5.5.9 as per minimum drupal. Can we have the page updated with minimum PHP version required for this composer project????

[geerlingguy]

@joshua-graham-adelphi - Good point. Note that I'm not the maintainer of this project, just a happy user and contributor. Anyone can update the README via a pull request. I would suggest that section be removed entirely, but if it is kept around, it should definitely be changed.

[webflo]

I tried to run composer install in the docker image from Drupal CI (drupalci/php-5.5.38-apache:production). It did not succeeded. PHP 5.5 is EOL. I see no reason to support PHP 5.5 any further. PHP 5.6 should be sufficient for most cases.

Fixed in 4a664d2.

[joshua-graham-adelphi]

Thanks for update in readme & composer.json :-)