Is PHP Dead On Windows? Rate Of Impact?

We know that the current cadence is 2 years from release for bug fixes, and 1 year after that for security fixes. This means that PHP 7.2 will be going out of support in November. PHP 7.3 will be going into security fix mode only in November. PHP 7.4 will continue to have another year of bug fix and then one year of security fixes. We are committed to maintaining development and building of PHP on Windows for 7.2, 7.3 and 7.4 as long as they are officially supported. We are not, however, going to be supporting PHP for Windows in any capacity for version 8.0 and beyond.

Microsoft recently announced PHP wouldn’t be supported on Windows, so should I be concerned if I’m a PHP developer? Does this mean the end of PHP?

If you are an experienced PHP developer, I know you ain’t bothered or concerned of the recent announcement, because 99% of the time, if you are deploying your PHP application, you are going to be implementing it on a Linux environment and not on a Microsoft server. I’m pretty sure most PHP developers are not even aware of that fact that Microsoft support PHP, so I believe the announcement is a non-issue.

All I can deduce from the announcement is there are probably not too many people using PHP on Windows in the first place.

You have to understand Microsoft has a very open dispositional vis-a-vis programming language. In the old days, Microsoft was very centric towards Microsoft technologies and products, but these days they’ve opened up and realized that they can embrace different frameworks, languages and operating systems. So currently you can install a Linux operating system on windows pretty quickly, and that is because Microsoft is making that happen.

If you need to run PHP, you are likely going to be developing a PHP application in the environment of deployment, which in most cases is on a Linux server

On a windows environment, you can install Linux and then run your PHP application on that Linux environment all within your Windows operating system and voila, problem solved or probably just run PHP on a Docker environment

If you look at the latest PHP usage statistics depending on which one you are looking at, PHP is typically in the top 5 or 6 most popular widely-used programming language in the world. 30 to 35 per cent of websites run PHP in some form or another, so just because Microsoft won’t support PHP anymore doesn’t mean some other company won’t step up to do it, having in mind that PHP is open-sourced.

Lastly, if there is going be a severe need for PHP on windows, you can be sure someone is going to do it, and that could be you, but I don’t think there is, because you can run Linux on Windows pretty efficiently or probably in your docker containers. I don’t see why you should be very bothered about running PHP directly on windows