Exception thrown by I18nSniff in PHP 8.1

[jjgrainger]

While testing in PHP 8.1 all warnings from the I18n_Usage_Check are replaced by the following Exception thrown. It looks as though the issue is to do with WPCS dependency rather than the plugin check itself but we may want to consider how this is handled?

An error occurred during processing; checking has been aborted. The error message was: trim(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/plugin-check/vendor/wp-coding-standards/wpcs/WordPress/Sniffs/WP/I18nSniff.php on line 194

[spacedmonkey]

This seems like a P0 and should be fixed ASAP.

[mukeshpanchal27]

@jjgrainger I check the issue in deeply and found that the issue is in wp-coding-standards/wpcs and it is not support in 8.1 and we can't override the composer package files or any have any quick fix for it. The wp-coding-standards/wpcs team is working in 3.0 that will solve this error. Mean time we can use any of below approach.

Approach 1: Update wp-coding-standards/wpcs version to develop branch or last commit in the composer.json.

Develop branch:

"require-dev": {
    "wp-coding-standards/wpcs": "dev-develop"
}

Last commit branch:

"require-dev": {
    "wp-coding-standards/wpcs": "dev-feature/abstractclassrestrictions-improvements"
}

Approach 2: We can add steps in our readme.txt/readme.md how to update wp-coding-standards/wpcs to development version if anyone want to use plugin in PHP 8.1.

Using Plugin check on PHP 8.1

If you plan on using this plugin on PHP 8.1, you will need to make some modifications to your Composer configuration.

Add the Composer repository to your project's composer.json file:

Switch to the develop Version

Add the following to your composer.json file autoload-dev section:

"require-dev": {
       "wp-coding-standards/wpcs": "dev-develop"
}

@felixarntz @joemcgill @spacedmonkey i did like to get you feedback on this so we can move forward.

[spacedmonkey]

The related tickets. WordPress/WordPress-Coding-Standards#2070 & WordPress/WordPress-Coding-Standards#1877

Seems like their is plans or release plans for 3.0.0 which will have support for PHP 8.0+.

We have options.

1. Remove all wpcs based checks, support PHP 8.0+
2. Conditionally load wpcs on PHP 8.0-
3. Load from dev-develop in composer
4. Use composer-patches to patch this issue.

Load from dev-develop, I would recommend locking down to a commit like this. "sabberworm/php-css-parser": "dev-master#bfdd976", ( Example ).

Using composer patches might be a tidy solution, but might result in find other issues with PHP 8.0.

Using dev-develop feel like the only option, but I am not sure I like it.

[joemcgill]

If we want to support PHP 8.1 with WPCS sniffs, I think the only real solution is to use the dev-develop branch until they've released version 3.0. Pinning our support to a specific commit hash is not a bad idea. Alternately, if we know there are specific tests that should be avoided, we can ship our own phpcs.xml file that excludes any rules that are problematic, like the I18n_Usage_Check sniff.

[spacedmonkey]

If we are going to load from a dev-develop we HAVE to lock down to a commit. Otherwise, upstream change can break our plugin. I have had this problem on other projects.

[jjgrainger]

Thanks for the input here everyone!

Just adding that we plan to use a number of WPCS sniffs in other checks (not just the I18n_Usage_Check). So it looks like the best path forward here, as others have already stated, is to use the dev-develop branch at a specific commit 👍

@mukeshpanchal27 can you move this one forward with this approach and let me know if you have any question. Thanks