webtrees 2.2 PHP Changes

Over on the forums for webtress, an online PHP-based genealogy program, a question was asked about webtrees 2.2 and what are the main changes between webtrees 2.1 and webtrees 2.2, and it looks like the main changes are “under the hood”, basically technical changes:

webtrees 2.1

  • Supports PHP 7.4 – PHP 8.3 and uses older third-party libraries.
  • Contains same “fixes” in webtrees 2.2 except for a feature concerning the auto-rotation of images that is due to a newer library not running on PHP 7.4

webtrees 2.2

  • Updated third-party libraries
  • Uses PHP 8.2 features.

I will look at it more, but it looks like webtrees 2.2 may require PHP 8.2 as the minimum (rather than support up to 8.2 or beyond) if it’s using 8.2 features. PHP 8.2 provides better performance, error messaging, and security over PHP 7.2. If you’re not familiar with it, a large chunk of the web runs on PHP, which is a scripting language focused on web development.

Just because webtrees 2.1 supports up to PHP 8.3 does not mean it supports PHP 8.x features, it just means that it can run under PHP 8.x thanks to backwards compatibility.

If features specific to PHP 8.2 are built into webtrees 2.2, then it will require PHP 8.2 to run. I would guess the performance and security features would be the biggest reasons.

I watched a presentation earlier this year that mentioned up to 80% usage of the PHP 8.0 – 8.3 series, so it makes sense that the webtrees developers would start looking at taking advantage of features in the 8.0 series.

If you’d like to see webtrees 2.2 in action, you can try out the development demo server:

https://dev.webtrees.net/demo-dev/tree/demo

Main Site:

https://webtrees.net/