Numbers used are download for the base packages (php-common) in the past month, so about 150,000 downloaded packages.

Notices:

  • this numbers are computed from the web server logs, from my server and most of the official mirrors, it can be altered by users pulling the full content (reposync) but ignore the numerous users of a internal private mirror (rsync).
  • only base packages statistics are used, SCL being often used in multi-versions environment, so cannot be combined (about 65,000 downloads)
  • my repository is the only one to provides these 6 versions for EL-6 and EL-7, so some users start to use it for the EOL versions (inflating the numbers), and version 5.4 is the default one in the main repository (remi).
  • numbers are only about my RPM repository, thus about people who choose to update the default version provided by the base distribution, so are of course not about the real distribution, but can give a idea about it.

1. Version distribution

Numbers:

  • PHP 7.2.4: 12.7%
  • PHP 7.1.15: 17.8%
  • PHP 7.0.28: 14.2%
  • PHP 5.6.34: 38.4%
  • PHP 5.5.38: 10.3%
  • PHP 5.4.45: 6.6%

We notice that a small percentage still use the EOL versions (17%), of course, still too much. More than half of the users are stalled on version 5, but for those who have upgraded to version 7, adoption of new the minor versions is quite good.

2. Evolution

Comparison with numbers of February for versions 5.6.33, 7.0.27, 7.1.13 and 7.2.1:

  • PHP 7.2 : 9.8% => 15.3% (+56%)
  • PHP 7.1 : 23.9% => 21.4% (-11%)
  • PHP 7.0 : 18.7% => 17.1% (-9%)
  • PHP 5.6 : 47.5% => 46.2% (-3%)

Which confirms the good adoption speed for the new minor versions for the users of version 7.x, so PHP 7.2 should be soon more used than 7.0; and later than 7.1.

3. Support

Reminder, versions 5.6 and 7.0 will reach their end of life at the end of this year, so I recommend to urgently plan the upgrade to a maintained version.

See: Supported Versions