[CentOS] CentOS, PHP & OwnCloud/Nextcloud: the version dilemma

Hi,

I'm currently experimenting with OwnCloud and Nextcloud on a sandbox
CentOS 7 server. I've been using OwnCloud for the last two years for my
own purposes on a Slackware server, and I'm quite happy with it.

In my humble opinion, every admin who wants to host OwnCloud or
Nextcloud on a RHEL/CentOS server is confronted with a version dilemma.

1. CentOS 7 sports PHP 5.4, which has been officially EOL for quite some
time, but Red Hat will provide security update backports until 2024.
Which is fine.

2. Currently supported versions of Nextcloud (namely the 11.x and 12.x
branch) require a minimum of PHP 5.6. Which seems reasonable. But if I
pull in PHP 5.6 from Webtatic, for example, I only get the "official"
PHP support, which will end in 2018 for the 5.6 branch. And no security
backports.

3. The solution would be to go with Nextcloud 10, which only requires
PHP 5.4, and which is also provided in package form by EPEL. 'yum info
nextcloud' shows that the current EPEL version is 10.0.4... but a peek
on the Nextcloud homepage shows me that this version is officially
unsupported. Uh oh.

4. Some of the stuff I'm hosting on my CentOS 7 server (like CMSMS) is
not compatible with PHP 7.x versions.

So right now I don't see a solution for this. As far as I can see, the
"least evil" solution would be to pull in PHP 5.6 from Webtatic and go
for Nextcloud 11.x, and have an EOL for both around next summer.

I'd be curious if some of you are familiar with this sort of dilemma (I
guess so) and how you manage it.

Cheers,

Niki Kovacs
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