PHP trend goes to own clouds, PHP 8 and Alpine Linux

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More and more companies are switching their web applications from the cloud to on-premises, giving hyperscalers such as Amazon Webservices (AWS) or Microsoft Azure the cold shoulder. This is the conclusion of the latest PHP Landscape Report for 2024, which PHP publisher Zend publishes annually.

Zend identified the trend away from the cloud as early as 2023. In 2024, 55.7% of respondents left hyperscalers behind and used their own computing infrastructure instead. In contrast, 33.6 percent stayed with AWS, 12.4 percent with Digital Ocean, 10.3 percent with Microsoft Azure and 9 percent with the Google Cloud Platform (multiple answers were permitted here). Zend believes that the increasing popularity of private clouds is partly due to the industry-wide rise in prices for hyperscalers. Other factors include data protection and compliance with other legal regulations.

PHP 8.3 remains the most popular PHP version

The majority of developers use PHP 8, with PHP 8.3 leading with a share of 64 percent. This is followed by PHP 8.2 with 56.5 percent, PHP 8.1 with 45.1 percent and PHP 7.4 with 38.7 percent. Multiple answers were also permitted here. On average, teams use 2.66 different PHP versions, an increase compared to 2023 with an average of 2.43 different PHP versions.

According to Zend, the popularity of PHP 8.3 is not due to the extended PHP lifecycle support in 2024, which was introduced too late to have an impact on the survey. Rather, the team suspects that it was due to the low transition hurdles from version 7 to 8: "With PHP 8, the majority of deprecated features and backward compatibility breaks had limited impact on most applications, making it easier to adopt new releases."

When selecting the PHP version, another trend emerges: at 62.3 percent, the majority of developers use PHP versions that are still supported by the community. In contrast, only 37.7% still use end-of-live (EOL) PHPs. This is a significant decline compared to previous years. In 2023, EOL versions still accounted for 54.5% of deployments and in 2022 even 61%. 76.3% of participants have carried out a PHP migration in the last 12 months.

PHP 7.4 was left behind by 51.1 percent, while 29.2 percent of respondents migrated from PHP 8.1, 25.3 percent from PHP 8.0, 24.6 percent from PHP 5.6 or older and 20.5 percent from PHP 8.2. The main migration target from PHP 7.x is PHP 8.3 with a share of 27.8 percent, closely followed by PHP 8.2 with 26.8 percent. Respondents named testing (38.2%) and refactoring (35.6%) as the most time-consuming factors in migration.

CentOS loses, Alpine Linux wins

As in the previous year, Debian-based platforms are still in the lead when it comes to operating systems. 55.6% of all PHP applications run on Ubuntu and 38.2% directly on Debian. This is followed by CentOS with 18.8 percent, Alpine Linux with 17.7 percent, Red Hat Enterprise Linux with 13.2 percent and Windows with 13.2 percent.

CentOS has lost a significant amount of share, which is due to the fact that Red Hat discontinued support for it in June 2024. Compared to 2023, CentOS is still in third place, but has lost almost 5.7%. Alpine Linux, on the other hand, has made a significant leap forward. The storage-safe OS improved from 10th place to 4th place, gaining 5.6%.

Container top dog Docker

An absolute majority of developers answered the question about the container technology used in the same way: Docker dominates the market with a share of 93.3%. Podman comes a distant second with 12.1 percent and containerd third with 11.5 percent. However, both are used significantly more frequently than in 2023 (Podman: 8.1%; containerd: 5.5%).

Zend also notes in the PHP survey that it is primarily larger companies that are building their PHP environments with the help of containers: "The learning curve for container technologies is steep, which often acts as a deterrent for smaller companies. In addition, adapting community images can prove difficult, which also causes frustration."

When asked about the problems most frequently encountered with community images, 26.4 percent of developers cited difficulties in managing PHP extensions and 16.8 percent cited incomplete documentation or patchy support.

The survey was conducted by Zend (part of DevOps provider perforce since 2019) between October and December 2024 among 561 PHP users, 75 percent of whom classify themselves as developers. Around 90 percent of participants stated that they had been using PHP for five years or longer. Around 58 percent have been using it for fifteen years or longer. The complete survey with many more details can be downloaded free of charge from Zend's website upon registration.

(mki)