Re:Laravel 7
by kugelblitz on Monday March 09, 2020 @03:12AM
(#22523541)
Yeah, my first Laravel application (actually my first use of a framework) was Laravel 4.2 because my personal project was getting more and more complex.
When I wanted to upgrade, reading this did make me wonder a bit: "The recommended method of upgrading is to create a new Laravel 5.0 install and then to copy your 4.2 site's unique application files into the new application. This would include controllers, routes, Eloquent models, Artisan commands, assets, and other code specific to your application."
My worry was: "Do I have to do this with every version??!"
Fortunately not, but the updates did take some time; I still updated a few minor versions before moving to Symfony.
I know there is a lot of capability wrapped up in the framework which enables rapid development, but for long lived applications, you're going to spend a not-insignificant amount of your time keeping up with upgrades. So in a sense, the framework itself becomes technical debt. That makes it a bad framework from my point of view.
Your code base should not be forced to be so tightly coupled to the framework that you have to spend time updating it to keep up with the framework versions (or get stuck on an old version).