PHP version conflict for PHPBB3 on Xenial

[Rick Tanner]

PHPBB3 requires a version of PHP 5.3.3+ and PHP < 7.0

Xenial's default version of PHP is 7.0.8-0ubuntu0.16.04.2

While the install appears to work, when trying to access the forum via web browser it gives this error instead:

SQL ERROR [ mysql4 ]
mysql_connect function does not exist, is mysql extension installed? []

The PHPBB3 installation package should detect and alert the user that there is a dependency error with PHP 7.0+ and stop the installation at that point.

( NOTE: Following the steps to regress to PHP 5.6 allowed this test setup to work.
http://askubuntu.com/questions/756181/installing-php-5-6-on-xenial-16-04 )

System information:

Description: Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS
Release: 16.04

phpbb3 version: 3.0.14-1ubuntu1

PHP version: 7.0.8-0ubuntu0.16.04.2

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Nish Aravamudan (nacc)]

Thank you for filing this bug report.

phpbb3 has been deleted from Debian (Bug # 816655) and also from Ubuntu in Y and on. However, it seems upstream phpbb3 has updated their base to be compliant with PHP7 (e.g. https://tracker.phpbb.com/browse/PHPBB3-13657?jql=text%20~%20%22php7%22). In this case, given the abandonment in Debian, it might be most appropriate to update the major version of phpbb3 to a level supporting PHP7. Let me see if uscan/uupdate work on the source package and I will try to provide a build in a PPA to test.

Thanks,
Nish

[Bob Tanner (tanner)]

Any status on the ppa?

[Nish Aravamudan (nacc)]

Sorry for the delay on my end, I got distracted by other issues. uscan/uupdate does find the new version, but the code is so different, it will take me a bit to get the Debian patches to apply. I will work on it today.