MicroSymfony 8: ready for the LTS promise

Published on 2026-02-28 • Modified on 2026-02-28

In this post, we have a look at the new Symfony 8 version of the MicroSymfony application template and how I start the LTS promise on this open-source project. Let's go! 😎

Prerequisite

I assume you have at least a basic knowledge of Symfony.

Introduction

In a previous post I explained in detail what is MicroSymfony and the philosophy behind it. If you don't know it let's have a look at it or at the GitHub homepage.
The goal of MicroSymfony is to be able to quickly start a Symfony project with solid foundations. It is perfect for small/medium projects.

• If you want to make a POC of something
• If you want to test stuff without starting from scratch again and again
• If you want to test Symfony UX/Hotwired/Stimulus.

MicroSymfony for Symfony 8

I have released the first version of MicroSymfony for Symfony on the 1st of January 2026 (8.0.3). Then I released at the end of the month the 8.0.4 version which I consider to be finally "feature complete".

This version includes Doctrine, I must say I have hesitated quite a lot of time on the fact to include or not in this project. I think this is the good move because we use a SQLite database, that means we don't have a hard database dependency because the SQLite database is just a file. Then, when deploying, the only mandatory dependency is PHP (8.4 is required for Symfony 8).

With this new feature, I consider the project is feature complete. If MicroSymfony wants to stay "Micro", I think it should not add stuff. And that's why I consider it ready for the LTS promise.

🚀 MicroSymfony features

So what are the features? Here is a summary you can find on the GitHub homepage.

• Doctrine ORM+DBal using a SQLite database
• FrankenPHP ready
• Two task runners
  • Make (source) (demo) (output)
  • Castor (source) (demo) (output)
• Static analysis with PHPStan 2
  • Configuration
• Coding standards with php-cs-fixer
  • Configuration
• Tests (demo)
  • Unit test example
  • Integration test example
  • Functional test example
  • API test example
  • E2E test example
• Code coverage at 100% (configurable threshold)
  • Coverage report on Scrutinizer
• GitHub CI (actions)
  • Tests job output
  • Lint job output
  • Security job output
• AssetMapper+Stimulus (documentation)
  • Vanilla JS (source) (demo)
  • Fetches JSON data from an application endpoint (source) (demo)
• A custom error template
  • Source
  • Demo

Now that I consider the project to be feature complete, I can start the LTS promise.

🤔 What is the LTS promise?

LTS stands for "Long Term Support". For example, Symfony LTS versions are minor versions ending with x.4, the current LTS version is 7.4. And as indicated in this page, the LTS promise for Symfony 7.4 goes from November 2025 to November 2029 (for bug fixes). You can find all this data on the Symfony release page. This calendar is predictable, we know the release schedule. For example Symfony 8.1 will be released during May 2026.

The MicroSymfony LTS promise

The length of the LTS promise is not the same for every projects. For example, it is 3 years for Symfony, for windows it is 10 years.

MicroSymfony is a template, it is used to initialize a project. It is not included in your vendor, so the term LTS may not be adapted here. But, my "LTS promise" is to maintain MicroSymfony for a long period (10 years) without changing the features. So even if you come back one or two years after your first try you should find the same stuff and the same solid and predictable base. I will release a new version after each Symfony version (bugfix, minor and major). This is quite easy, because MicroSymfony is a small project. Note that I will not support multiple Symfony versions and I will always use the most recent minor version. As I write these lines, it is Symfony 8.0.

But if you want to switch to the last 7.4 version, you have a prompt that can be processed by a coding agent. Currently I really like opencode, one can run:

$ opencode --prompt agents/downgrade-to-symfony-7-4-LTS.md

And you are done. Of course, you can run the procedure manually.

Conclusion

So, let's try, it can be fun. In ten years, MicroSymfony will use Symfony 12!
Of course, a lot of things may have changed. With the rise of AI, the web will be probably different, but for sure the need to build quality projects with Symfony will remain.
Don't forget to add a star ⭐ on GitHub please, it would be nice to reach 200 ⭐ before 2027. Thanks!

That's it! I hope you like it. Check out the links below to have additional information related to the post. As always, feedback, likes and retweets are welcome. (see the box below) See you! COil. 😊

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