Feedback: PHP version requirements

[Devilshakerz]

Last year, we decided to raise the requirements to PHP 7.4, without crossing the PHP 8 boundary that involved minor, but often numerous corrections in the source code of plugins and MyBB itself.

However, given: the upcoming batches of new code i.a. for the 1.9 Theme System; the adoption of PHP 8, combined with the removal of unsupported PHP versions on common hosting platforms; and the ultimate need to support recent versions in core & plugins, regardless of requirements (which is done continuously in MyBB through 1.8.x compatibility patches, subsequently applied to 1.9 code), we have bumped current requirements for the 1.9 series to PHP ≥ 8.1.

The 8.1 choice is based on requirements in third-party dependencies and language features [PHP 8.0][PHP 8.1] related to strict typing and otherwise improved code quality.

This follows our initial intentions to require relatively recent and supported version of PHP, and allows the Project's to further reduce the overhead & limitations coming from the need to stay compatible with a wide range of PHP versions.