Sprout 5.0

[gwillz]

Major versions give us a opportunity to make proper breaking changes (for the better).

With Sprout 5, there are some simple but big goals.

Strong Types

All good things. Go hard.

PHP 8.2 minimum

It's a shame Ubuntu 24.04 doesn't have 8.4. But this will stick long enough before they release 26.04 next year and we can finally get property hooks.

PHP 8.2 gives us disjunctive types and standalone true/false/null types. All very useful things for strong typings.

Remember this doesn't prevent downstream projects from using newer PHP. Only it prevents using these newer features in core Sprout.

All dependent packages on new PHP

Bring everything up to spec and clean out the cobwebs. Targeting at least v8.x.

• Kb PHP - v5
• PDB- v2
• RDB - v2
• Router - v2

Revise base controller

There's a stink in how JsonForms integrates with ManagedAdminController. That needs a fix.

Gutting Kohana

Kohana holds a lot of baggage, particularly because it's code that we've not written or maintain.

This PR #177 resolves much of the issues with our bootstrap. We might merge that in the 4.x series if we're feeling confident.

The config loader is still convoluted and the output buffer is a total spaghetti. This is resolved in #178.

Anything else?

This is a good chance to clean out any cobwebs that have been lingering. Is there anything that we need to break to make our little world of Sprout a bit brighter?

[gwillz]

For example, I would like to consider ICU translations if there's time to squeeze it in.