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RHEL 7.1 ships with PHP 5.4 and that version is going out of support soon.

Based on historical trends, will RHEL upgrade to a new major version of PHP?

UPDATE

  • RHEL 7.1 - PHP 5.4.16
  • RHEL 7.0 - PHP 5.4.16
  • RHEL 6.5 - PHP 5.3.3
  • RHEL 6.0 - PHP 5.3.2
  • RHEL 5.10 - PHP 5.1.6
  • RHEL 5.0 - PHP 5.1.6
  • RHEL 4.9 - PHP 4.3.9
  • RHEL 4.0 - PHP 4.3.9
gtirloni
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  • The IUS community project offers updated PHP and other packages specifically compatible with RHEL. You just have to add their repo to your yum config. https://iuscommunity.org/pages/About.html – Seth Stone Jun 25 '15 at 15:46

2 Answers2

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Based on historical trends, no, they won't. CentOS 5 - which is still very much in support (currently 5.11), will remain so until 2017/03/31, and which as you know mirrors RHEL - ships with PHP 5.1.6; 5.3.3 is offered as an alternative within the core repositories, but both versions are past end-of-life according to the link you provided.

If a fatal flaw were discovered in either version, I imagine that RH would simply develop a patch for it themselves. There have been occasions in the past when a version number was bumped - sendmail comes to mind, though I can't put my finger on a reference at the moment - but they haven't, on the whole, been happy ones.

MadHatter
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  • It seems I'll have to part ways with RHEL's version of PHP and move to 5.6 on my own then. Thanks for the answer. – gtirloni Jun 25 '15 at 14:46
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    Look at Software Collections which provides separate installations of newer versions of things like PHP, Ruby, Python, etc. – bodgit Jun 25 '15 at 14:48
  • @bodgit I take it that you are advising the OP (and it's good advice), rather than objecting to part of my answer? – MadHatter Jun 25 '15 at 14:51
  • @MadHatter Yes, in hindsight maybe that should've been a separate answer – bodgit Jun 25 '15 at 14:56
  • @bodgit if the OP had asked "*How can I get PHP 5.6 on my RHEL7 box? Can I just wait for RH to upgrade it when PHP 5.4 goes out of support?*" then I think your comment would've made a good answer. – MadHatter Jun 25 '15 at 14:59
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It doesn't actually matter when the upstream PHP version is going out of support. That only matters if you actually get your copy of PHP from there. But you don't, you're paying for Red Hat to support the copy of PHP that they ship to you and Red Hat will honor that responsibility no matter what the upstream project does or does not support.

That being said the simple answer is no, Red Hat usually does not upgrade to a new major version. This is however not always the case and they sometimes rebase packages to new major versions. You just can't rely on them doing that. What is much more likely is that they are going to include a newer version that can be installed side by side or replace the stock version. You can also opt to install a newer version from Red Hat Software Collections which is supported by Red Hat and usually included in your RHEL subscription.

John Tall
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