Does wp-env have a minimum requirement for core version?

[mkismy]

I'm currently working to update a old WordPress 4.8 instance to the latest 7.0 and while setting up local environment for 4.8 using wp-env, this is what I got:

.wp-env.json
{
    "phpVersion": "7.4",
    "core": "https://ja.wordpress.org/wordpress-4.8.25-ja.zip"
}
or
{
    "phpVersion": "7.4",
    "core": "WordPress/WordPress#4.8.25",
}

$ wp-env start
✖ Error while running docker compose command.
WordPress is already installed.
Success: Rewrite structure set.
Success: Rewrite rules flushed.
 Container wp-env-project-8fc0ae28-mysql-1 Running 
 Container wp-env-project-8fc0ae28-wordpress-1 Running 
 Container wp-env-project-8fc0ae28-mysql-1 Waiting 
 Container wp-env-project-8fc0ae28-mysql-1 Healthy 
 Container wp-env-project-8fc0ae28-cli-run-682d60755ad9 Creating 
 Container wp-env-project-8fc0ae28-cli-run-682d60755ad9 Created 
Error: Could not process the 'wp-config.php' transformation.
Reason: Unable to locate placement anchor.

I wonder if this is a bug or wp-env just simply does not support older WordPress versions.

[t-hamano]

This might be related to https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/40745.\

Since WordPress 4.8 does not support PHP 7.4, it might be best to set the PHP version to 7.1 and upgrade incrementally.

[meyshad]

The PHP < 7.1 report in #40745 is a different case. This error with WordPress 4.8 matches the old wp-config.php anchor (define('WP_DEBUG' without spaces), which was fixed in #55864. Current wp-env does support WordPress versions below 5.4.

Make sure a stale project-local package is not overriding your global install, then refresh the downloaded sources:

npm install --save-dev @wordpress/env@latest
npx wp-env --version
npx wp-env start --update

If the old generated environment is still reused, back up anything you need from it, run npx wp-env destroy once, and start again. destroy removes that local environment's database and files.