MediaWiki 1.31 from April 2018 started to require PHP 7.0+ (see T172165). Since all our actively developed codebases depend on what was on core's master branch at the time, all these codebases do depend on MediaWiki 1.31, and therefore do in fact already depend on PHP 7.0+. At this point it might bee pointless to keep the compatibility with PHP 5.6.
== What to do
```lang=JSON, name=extension.json
"requires": {
"MediaWiki": ">= 1.31.0"
}
```
```lang=JSON, name=composer.json
"require": {
"php": ">=5.6.99"
}
```
Possibly update the #mediawiki-codesniffer as well. Then start using [all the new features PHP 7.0 introduced](http://php.net/manual/en/migration70.php).
== Why
* Most extensions still specify compatibility with MediaWiki 1.31 because [it is the current LTS version](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Version_lifecycle).
* Extensions are allowed to go higher when needed, e.g. when we need to use a core feature from a later version. We can still backport most changes (all that don't use new features). Having to support an LTS version does not mean you can't use new features.
* However, we believe it is a good idea to freeze the required PHP version to 7.0, and not use 7.1+ features. This makes possible backports easier.
Relevant #german-community-wishlist extensions:
[] #advanced-search
[] #electron-pdfs
[] #move-files-to-commons
[] #revision-slider
[] #two-column-edit-conflict-merge