
Laravel 5.1 with LTS is released - ericbarnes
https://laravel-news.com/2015/06/laravel-5-1-released/
======
jbrooksuk
I'm super excited about Laravel 5.1

We've been using it with Cachet
([https://github.com/cachethq/cachet](https://github.com/cachethq/cachet)) for
a couple of weeks. Mainly it was to make testing our API easier, the new
PHPUnit extensions are so freaking amazing - it makes unit testing a dream.

Other than that, other cool features I like are the LTS, dropping of the
mcrypt extension requirement and also the broadcasting feature (which is worth
checking out btw)

Also this release contains some code that I've committed too, which is always
a nice feeling :)

------
sarciszewski
[http://laravel.com/docs/5.1/releases#laravel-5.1](http://laravel.com/docs/5.1/releases#laravel-5.1)

    
    
        In previous versions of Laravel, encryption was handled by the
        mcrypt PHP extension. However, beginning in Laravel 5.1, encryption is
        handled by the openssl extension, which is more actively maintained.
    

This is easily my favorite aspect of the new release. Please, everyone else,
follow their example and stop using mcrypt in your projects.

~~~
colinramsay
Annoyingly I just set up a Laravel install for evaluation on OSX and wrestled
with getting mcrypt to work!

~~~
fideloper
IM(not so H)O, wrestling with Mac is not worth anyone's time. Using Vagrant or
a similar VM setup will get you in an environment much more like "production"
and with fewer headaches caused by mac's special snowflake OS.

(I personally use Mac as my host OS, because I love it, except when it comes
to installing server software).

~~~
Killswitch
Chris, I agree with you completely. I also suggest this beaut:
[https://github.com/fideloper/Vaprobash](https://github.com/fideloper/Vaprobash)
wink wink, hint hint.

~~~
bovermyer
An idempotent provisioner would be a better option. Ansible is my favorite.

~~~
Killswitch
I've tried Ansible and Puppet, but I just never could get used to them or like
them. I like the shell provisioner because I know EXACTLY what it's doing. I
can provision a server myself, I have the knowledge and understanding to. I
can type up the commands in a bash script to provision it faster than I could
learn exactly what Ansible or Puppet or Chef are doing when I tell it to
install Nginx.

~~~
lawry
I get completely where you are coming from, the reason that I eventually got
the hang of Ansible is because if you do it right (I mean using ansible's
modules over scripts/commands) it adds the ability to rerun your ansible
playbooks (think of them like those bash scripts) multiple times on the same
cluster/node/server without worrying something will change because you run
them more than once. Also bash on it's own has no templating feature, or easy
way to check if something has already happend. And after a while the whole
systems starts making sense.

I can only imagine your current bash-scripts are awesome and do tons of stuff
for you, but I'd really like to suggest you give ansible another go, and
ignore the different files for roles/vars/tasks in the beginning, just dump
everything into one playbook, like your bash scripts do currently.

------
noir_lord
Just upgraded a large 5 to 5.1 codebase in under 5 minutes (4 of that was
composer ;) ) and everything passed functional testing.

Outstanding work and the new docs are an excellent improvement.

------
colinramsay
This is a great idea. My main gripe (on a very short evaluation) with Laravel
is that the default application that artisan gives you comes with a lot of
files dotted around the directory structure. With something like Rails these
tend to be locked away in a gem and so when using CTRL+T (or similar) you get
a lot of cruft popping up.

That said I do like the things that Laravel gives you out of the box like auth
and the command pattern.

~~~
ceejayoz
`php artisan fresh` removes a lot of the default files. They're intended as a
starting point for new users but are entirely removable.

~~~
romanovcode
This command has been removed since like half year ago.
[https://github.com/laravel/framework/commit/37ebc7ecc693405a...](https://github.com/laravel/framework/commit/37ebc7ecc693405a717239ca30e0586d0a71e4d3)

~~~
zefman
No it hasn't
[https://github.com/laravel/framework/blob/5.1/src/Illuminate...](https://github.com/laravel/framework/blob/5.1/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Console/FreshCommand.php)

~~~
ceejayoz
Heh, apparently it's going away. Again.

[https://github.com/laravel/framework/pull/9161](https://github.com/laravel/framework/pull/9161)

------
mtbcoder
By extension, would Lumen (Laravel's micro framework sibling) also now have
LTS releases?

~~~
fideloper
It will use 5.1's base libraries, so "yes" (with air quotes).

------
Olap84
How many other Frameworks offer LTS releases?

Plenty are mature enough to offer this, but commercial backing must be hard to
come by.

~~~
speg
Leaving the PHP world, Django does:
[https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.8/internals/release-
proc...](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.8/internals/release-
process/#long-term-support-lts-releases)

------
ericbarnes
Being the first release offering LTS is fantastic news for the community.

------
sirstompsalot
Too bad it is still slow as a glacier.

~~~
fideloper
This comment makes no sense. Well, it makes sense, but I don't believe it
comes from someone who's really considered what they're saying.

First, it's PHP. Same situation with Ruby and Python. All generally slow as a
glacier (obvious exclusions being different implementations of said
languages).

Developers' focus on code speed is ridiculous (is that too strong a word?) due
to relative inexpensiveness of "hardware" and the "fact" (yep, fact) that code
is for building value.

In most cases, that value is provided via an automated service. Speed of that
automation is typically not critical (obvious exclusions being something like
medical equipment or stock trading, or making people wait ridiculous seconds
after clicking a button. Please don't Well Actually™ me to death with
pedantry).

~~~
sirstompsalot
Great response, and you make a great point - focus on coding speed is a great
reason to choose Laravel. It's also hugely popular and now with it's LTS, it's
going to be around for a while.

For me personally, I was a ZF 1.x guy; when I started a new project I chose
Laravel, and it was a dream - crazy zippy (compared to ZF). But as I started
to do more with it, I started to need to reduce my feature set, implement
performance "features" just to retain a measure of speed.

Is 5.x faster than 4.x? Sure. Does it include batteries and the kitchen sink?
You bet. Do I still prefer a faster framework like Phalcon and implement the
features I miss myself? Damned skippy.

~~~
thethimble
We're doing 2k req/s with Laravel for one of our API services. In order to
maintain ~150ms of latency, this takes us ~14 c3.2xlarge boxes in a load
balanced environment. We've done a lot of tuning to squeeze this much out of
the boxes (nginx + php fpm) but ultimately I feel pretty let down by
laravel/php. ~150 req/s per c3.2xlarge box is very disappointing. I'm hoping
to migrate off and go with something like Scala+Play or even Go perhaps.

~~~
no1youknowz
Don't walk, RUN if you can to HHVM. Like you, I was running on amazon. Sure
PHP runs at scale but then you have to load-balance. But come on, we had 20
servers at a cost of ~$6k a month. Thats just for the front-end also.

In August, I switched to HHVM and I was able to shrink down to a single
server. Now I'm running 3 for things like redundancy. My bill? Around $1500 a
month, big difference. No wonder Etsy, Wikipedia, Baidu and others have
switched over.

Not only this, but 3.8 is coming with increased performance over 7. Not only
RPS but also latency as well. I run an ad server and the latency DROP was huge
compared to PHP.

Oh and for the backend application. Moving to HHVM it definitely feels much
snappier than PHP. In some cases, you can see the difference. I don't regret
moving to HHVM. Very very doubtful I'd move back to PHP 7.

My only 2 complaints are that Postgres and zeroMQ drivers are 3rd party
extensions. There is talk of Postgres coming in house. I just wish more people
could petition for ZeroMQ to be included.

If you do go to HHVM. Maybe it may be worth moving from Laravel to Slim (3)?
You may get a boost due to the lower framework size? I know I did when going
from Codeigniter to Slim 2.

~~~
thethimble
We ran some experiments with HHVM last year. Unfortunately, some random
library that has a random dependency was failing on HHVM. The surface area for
this type of incompatibility is a bit too much for me to bear.

PHP once had its place to make .html files dynamic. Unfortunately, the ease of
making this happen accidentally turned PHP into what it is today. Beyond this,
there isn't much merit to the language, the frameworks, or the ecosystem at
all.

We're certainly running. But rather than stopping at HHVM, we're dropping PHP
altogether.

~~~
no1youknowz
Have you looked at hhvm recently? A lot has changed since then and things have
gotten better.

Although like you, I am eyeing golang as well. But not got any work scheduled
until the latter part of this year.

------
darkhorn
Why space? Why not tabs? Why do I need to press 10 times space instead of 2
times the tab?

~~~
bpicolo
Every editor in existence supports pressing tab to insert spaces and correctly
handling backspace in those instances

~~~
Moru
Yes, even my Atari could do that.

------
fweespeech
As interesting as LTS support is, 2 years is frankly very short.

I'm used to thinking of LTS support in terms of 4-5 years. I suspect everyone
else is too and Laravel is going to piss off everyone who doesn't read the
fine print.

~~~
noir_lord
> I suspect everyone else is too and Laravel is going to piss off everyone who
> doesn't read the fine print.

If I'm on a project where LTS matters I'd _not be doing my job if I didn 't
read the small print_.

~~~
fweespeech
I'd say that to the people that complain about MongoDB's default configuration
in the early days but many people feel perfectly justified in that position.

