Deprecations with PHP 8.4

[acelaya]

I noticed a few deprecation warnings when using this library with PHP 8.4

1. IPLib\Factory::rangeFromBoundaryAddresses(): Implicitly marking parameter $from as nullable is deprecated, the explicit nullable type must be used instead
2. IPLib\Factory::rangeFromBoundaryAddresses(): Implicitly marking parameter $to as nullable is deprecated, the explicit nullable type must be used instead

I can provide a PR fixing those and adding PHP 8.3 and 8.4 to the pipelines if desired.

[mlocati]

I can provide a PR fixing those and adding PHP 8.3 and 8.4 to the pipelines if desired.

Sure it'd be very welcome (unless it doesn't require increasing the minimum PHP version supported to something greater than 5.5)

[acelaya]

(unless it doesn't require increasing the minimum PHP version supported to something greater than 5.5)

I'm afraid the only way to fix it is by explicitly marking types as nullable (eg. ?string $foo = null instead of string $foo = null) which is only supported by PHP 7.1 and newer.

I guess another option would be using a different default value instead of null, like an empty string, but I don't know if the same functionality would be possible. I'll check it.

That said, PHP versions older than 7.1 are more than 8 years old and unsupported for a long time. What's the point on keeping support for those?

[acelaya]

Perhaps this helps choosing the right PHP versions to support https://packagist.org/packages/mlocati/ip-lib/php-stats#1.18

According to that, more than 95% of installs for the last version came from PHP >=7.1

[mlocati]

I belong to the remaining 5%

[acelaya]

I belong to the remaining 5%

Wow 😅

I'll try to find an approach that doesn't require using nullable types.

[acelaya]

I have just provided a PR fixing the deprecation warning in a way that does not require dropping support for older PHP versions #90

It's potentially a breaking change though, but I don't see a way around this that isn't.

[mlocati]

@acelaya Thank you for the report: I've just published version 1.18.1 which includes a fix for this issue

[acelaya]

Thanks! I'll go test it.