Please remove php8.0 from Ubuntu 21.04

[Bryce Harrington]

php8.0 is not scheduled to be included in Ubuntu 21.04. It is only in Ubuntu (universe) because it auto-synced from Debian.

Please remove it from Ubuntu 21.04, so that users won't be confused thinking it will be receiving support from security and server teams.

https://wiki.php.net/todo/php80

(c.f. LP: #1796753)

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Per discussion, php8.0 has now been added to the sync blacklist, so this bug can be closed.

[Massimiliano Arione (garakkio)]

Now php8 is not in pre-release anymore, it's in final release since last December.
I think it should be removed from sync blacklist and be included in Ubuntu 21.04

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

In Ubuntu we focus on supporting a single php version in a given release, and for hirsute (21.04) our focus is to stay with php7.4. Debian policy here differs, which is why php8 is available there.

When transitioning to a new version of php, the entire php stack needs to be rebuilt against that version, and all test cases re-run and validated. When this is done there are inevitably myriad incompatibility and other problems that take time to work through, as we saw in the 7.3->7.4 transition; our expectation is that 7.4->8.0 will be at least as involved and likely more. Unfortunately, the Ubuntu server team is short-staffed this cycle, so plan to focus on the full php8 transition as part of the 21.10 cycle.

However, there is an important chunk of the transition we're doing this cycle, which is updating phpunit from 8.5 -> 9.5. This is a pre-requisite piece for moving everything to php8, so having this in place for hirsute will help make the php8 transition smoother.

In the meantime, if you have spare time to assist in the move to php8 your time can be well spent testing Debian's php8 stack and submitting fixes and bug reports to them. I plan to do similarly as time permits.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

With 21.10 open, we can now let php8.0 back in (see LP: #1927264 and LP: #1927288)