0012. Upgrade to Laravel 9 and a PHP 8.1+ baseline

• Status: Accepted (retroactive)
• Date: 2024-02-14

Context and Problem Statement

The API started on Laravel 8 / PHP 7.4 (05ceebba). By 2024 Laravel 8 was out of support, PHP 7.4 was EOL, and dependencies (Passport, spatie/permission, Sentry SDK) required newer versions. The ~50 packages had to move with the API.

Considered Options

Not recorded. (No move beyond Laravel 9 is present in history; composer.json still pins laravel/framework ^9.)

Decision Outcome

• PHP 8 runtime arrived first via Docker (devilbox/php-fpm:8.0, 2021-09); PHP 8.1 tests were added in 2022-03 (63b38bb3).
• 2024-02-14/15 the “update laravel to l9” change set php >=8.1, laravel/framework ^9, laravel/passport ^11, spatie/laravel-permission ^6.3, sentry/sentry-laravel ^4.2, replaced facade/ignition with spatie/laravel-ignition, dropped fruitcake/laravel-cors, laravel/ui and Behat/Mink leftovers, and removed composer.lock for PHP 8.1 tests.
• The production image followed: PHP 8.2 (cbe9cfd7, 2024-02-16), PHP 8.3 (51d08ce8, 2025-01-08); CI tests PHP 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4.

Consequences

• Good: supported framework and PHP versions; modern dependencies.
• Bad: Laravel 9 itself reached end of security support in 2024; another upgrade is due. Inferred: the package-per-domain layout (ADR-0002) makes framework upgrades expensive, which is why the step stopped at 9.
• Bad: composer.lock handling differs between PHP versions in CI.

Evidence

• 63b38bb3 2022-03-17 “Add php 8.1 test”.
• 86b9e226 2024-02-14 “update laravel to l9” — api/composer.json, api/app/Http/Kernel.php.
• b7bef42f / b410dda7 2024-02-15 “update laravel to l9. composer fix” / “remove composer lock for php 8.1 tests and other fixes required for update from l8 to 9”.
• cbe9cfd7 2024-02-16 “docker build php8.2”; 51d08ce8 2025-01-08 “docker update. php 8.3”.