PHP 7 now supported by Feng Office!

PHP 7 support is here!!!

We have just released the first Feng Office (alpha) version supporting PHP7 (version 3.7.0).

Important:This is still an alpha release. If you are running a production environment please do not upgrade your production environment until thoroughly tested.

PHP7 has been under development many years now. It is not only the most robust and powerful PHP version ever, but it provides increased performance, new capabilities, and prevents issues inherent to older versions.

Also, PHP5.6 (the previous most prevalent version) is nearing the end of its supported life. The latest versions of all Operating Systems are forcing the upgrade from PHP5.6 to PHP7. So not upgrading had become unsustainable.

What has changed in version 3.7

The development work for supporting PHP7 required lots of changes, proving more challenging than we initially hoped it would.

Amongst many changes, there are many functions that have changed either their names, their parameters, or both.

Another one of the biggest changes is the fact that the MySQL (MariaDB) drivers need to be replaced.

Also on the Database side, there were changes introduced on the supported and required values for initializing data.

All of this things are definitively improvements and the process has helped us make a better Feng Office. But Feng Office is a large system with lots of parts. So make sure to do a diligent and thorough testing before you upgrade from a previous version to version 3.7.

Compatible infrastructure

What infrastructure is Feng Office 3.7 compatible with?

This version is being tested with the following infrastructure stack:

• Web server:
  • Apache2.4
• PHP:
  • PHP 7.0 and up
  • PHP 5.6 and up (soon to be discontinued)
• Database:
  • MariaDB 10.1 and up
  • MySQL 8.0 and up
  • MySQL 5.5 and up

Important:The Feng Office team is NOT testing Feng Office 3.7 with other, different infrastructure stack. You are most welcome to do so, and to provide us with any fixes that would help support other stack. If they do not cause problems with our standard, recommended infrastructure we will make our best effort to include it in an upcoming release.

How to help

The most important thing you need to do before rolling out Feng Office 3.7 is test it. At the time of this announcement Feng Office 3.7 is still an alpha release (which means it still requires more testing before it can be).

If you are a subscribed client, please ask us for a complimentary testing copy so that you can test a copy of your production environment.
If you are using the Community Edition you can download it here, and run your own tests. One known issue is that a fresh installation may require you to create the Database prior to running the installation script. We are investigating this issue but if you develop a solution, please do share it with us.
We hope you are as excited as we are with this news!