Microsoft will not support PHP for Windows in any capacity for version 8.0

Microsoft’s internal PHP project manager, Dale Hirt recently announced on the mailing list that Microsoft is not “going to be supporting PHP for Windows in any capacity for version 8.0 and beyond.”

Microsoft currently supports PHP by developing and building PHP 7.3 and PHP 7.4 on Windows. At the same time, when security fixes are required, Microsoft also helps build PHP 7.2 on Windows.

What does this mean? Someone left a message explaining that “For some possibly missing context, Microsoft runs https://windows.php.net and produces all the official builds of PHP for Windows. If you run `php.exe`, or `mod_php7.dll` or whatever the websapi versions are actually called, then you either use Microsoft’s own builds of PHP or you’re compiling it yourself.”

In other words, running PHP on Windows requires some environment-related configuration operations, including the relevant compilation process. If Microsoft does not provide official support, then developers need to solve the problem themselves.