Annual Baseline Review

Review the application PHP baseline at least annually and before major dependency work. The decision should account for upstream support, hosting availability, extension support, dependency constraints, operational readiness, and the cost of delaying upgrades.

Use This Reference When

• Check supported PHP branches on the official supported-versions page.
• Compare production, CI, local, and package constraints.
• Review extension and dependency compatibility.
• Plan upgrades early enough to resolve deprecations calmly.

Baseline Decision Record

current baseline
target baseline
PHP support window
hosting and extension readiness
dependency compatibility
intervening migration guides
staging evidence
rollout and rollback owner

This lesson deliberately avoids hard-coding a support-policy decision. Support windows and available branches change, so verify the official page at review time.