VM + Vagrant vs XAMPP vs WAMP (manual) vs LAMP (manual)

[spaceshiptrooper]

@felgall

Those are the only two versions of PHP with full support.

PHP 5.5 only gets security patches now and even that will cease in July.

Ah I see. Well that’s a bit of a bummer then.

@s_molinari

Please don’t test with unsupported versions of PHP. Even if the testing is automated, it is wasted effort. If a customer of yours is on an unsupported version of PHP, then it is your duty as a developer to tell them, “Sorry, I’d love to help you, but you are running outdated, unsupported and possibly insecure version of PHP. I can help you by getting you up to a more modern version of PHP, then my library/ software will work great for you too!”

But let’s say the user is using a free hosting service provider. Let’s say they signed up on 000webhost. 000webhost’s PHP version is stuck at 5.2. What then? Find a new host? It’s true you should find a new host, but what if the client doesn’t know or want to switch hosts? What if they have more than just your files on their account?

@s_molinari

Oh, and if they do ask for your help to upgrade their system to a higher version of PHP, your experience using a Linux VM locally will come in real handy. At that point, those devs using Windows only to develop on will be shrugging their shoulders.

True, but if you have a dev who’s installed Apache, PHP, and MySQL server on both Linux and Windows, it’s not that hard really to switch between the 2 OS.