PHP: Removal of deprecated types came as a surprise due to lack of deprecation announcement and has an unclear upgrade path based on current docs.

[SpencerMalone]

What version of protobuf and what language are you using?
Version: v4.31.0 -> 5.34.0
Language: PHP

There was no communicated deprecation of Google\Protobuf\Internal\RepeatedField when 4.31.0 was released for PHP in release notes, which makes the removal of it in only 3 releases after that quite a shock. It would be extremely helpful to update the 4.31 release notes to mention it and in 5.34 mention 4.31 as the intermediary version which has both types so that people know they should:

1. Update to a protobuf package version that is >=4.31, <=4.33
2. Regenerate all protos
3. Remove all manual references to Google\Protobuf\Internal\RepeatedField and update to Google\Protobuf\RepeatedField
4. Upgrade to 5.34

[anandolee]

Just tried but looks like we can not modify release notes on PECL for already release versions. If you are sure there's a way to modify the notes for already release notes, please let me know.

Additionally, when PHP 4.31 was released, the breaking change plan for 2026 was not started yet. Protobuf's 2026 breaking changes was approved in Q2 2025. For PHP breaking, the announcement was sent on September in protobuf news: https://protobuf.dev/news/2025-09-19/#php

Major (breaking) releases are targeted to Q1 release each year. 2026 Q1's release has breaking changes with major version bump to: Objective-C, Python, PHP, C++. Bazel which we have documented https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/releases/tag/v34.0