The release process specifically allows an extension to be deprecated and then punted to PECL. As for frameworks, I and others have already been going around (

The release process specifically allows an extension to be deprecated and then punted to PECL. As for frameworks, I and others have already been going around (for years before the mcrypt deprecation came up) switching things to use OpenSSL (and, for that matter, authenticated encryption) instead of mcrypt. https://paragonie.com/blog/2015/05/if-you-re-typing-word-mcrypt-into-your-code-you-re-doing-it-wrong https://paragonie.com/blog/2015/05/if-you-re-typing-word-mcr... To date: ZF, CodeIgniter, Symfony, Laravel, and CakePHP all support OpenSSL instead of Mcrypt, as do many, many more. You get E_DEPRECATED in 7.1 then in 7.2 you can still pecl install mcrypt ...if you really have a need to support abandonware.