Upgrading from Kohana / Koseven

Migrating to Konine

Konine is the successor to Koseven, which was archived on 14 April 2026. If you are running Koseven or Kohana and need to continue receiving PHP compatibility and security fixes, migrating to Konine is straightforward — the codebase is a direct continuation of Koseven 3.3.x.

Adding Konine as a remote

Rather than cloning a fresh copy, you can pull Konine’s changes directly into your existing project:

# Add the Konine repository as a new remote
git remote add konine https://github.com/hospicedev/konine.git

# Fetch all Konine branches and tags
git fetch konine

# Merge the Konine master branch into your current branch
git merge konine/master --allow-unrelated-histories

If you have local customisations to framework files (anything in system/ or the bundled modules/), resolve any merge conflicts in favour of your own code unless the conflict is in a PHP compatibility fix.

Keeping up to date

Once the remote is added, pulling future patches is a single command:

git fetch konine && git merge konine/master

Breaking Changes in Konine 3.4.x (PHP 8.4 compatibility)

The following changes were made as part of the feature/php84-compat work. Review each one before completing your migration.

PHP version requirement raised to 8.4

Minimum PHP version is now 8.4. The composer.json constraint has been updated to >=8.4. Verify your hosting environment before upgrading.

Mcrypt engine removed from the Encrypt module

The Encrypt_Engine_Mcrypt driver and its associated Kohana_Encrypt_Engine_Mcrypt class have been deleted. If you are using new Encrypt with a mcrypt type, your application will throw a fatal error.

Action required: Switch to the openssl engine. Update your application/config/encrypt.php:

return [
    'default' => [
        'type'   => 'openssl',
        'key'    => 'your-key-here',
        'cipher' => 'AES-256-CBC',
    ],
];

Any data previously encrypted with Mcrypt will need to be re-encrypted with OpenSSL.

ext-mbstring is now a required dependency

ext-mbstring has been added as a hard requirement in composer.json. The UTF8 class now delegates strtolower and str_pad to native mb_* functions instead of maintaining its own codepoint lookup tables. If mbstring is not enabled in your PHP installation, Composer will refuse to install.

Image::rotate() — fourth parameter removed

The deprecated fourth argument to PHP’s imagerotate() has been removed from Image_GD::_do_rotate(). If you have subclassed Image_GD and overridden _do_rotate() with the four-argument form, remove the final argument.

++ on non-integer values now throws TypeError (PHP 8)

PHP 8 raises a TypeError when you increment a non-numeric value with ++. The HTTP_Cache hit-counter code in modules/cache/classes/Kohana/HTTP/Cache.php has been updated to cast the cached value to (int) before incrementing. If your application does something similar with a cache driver that can return null on a miss, apply the same cast.

ORM behaviors() fix — no longer returns empty array

Kohana_ORM::behaviors() previously hard-coded return [], silently discarding any $_behaviors you defined. It now returns $this->_behaviors. If you were working around this by defining behaviors elsewhere, review your ORM models to avoid double-registration.

Request\Client\Stream — failed fopen() now throws

Request_Client_Stream previously silenced a failed fopen() and passed a non-resource to further processing. It now throws a Request_Exception immediately. If your code caught a downstream error from a bad stream URL, it will now receive the exception earlier.

Request\Client\Curl — non-integer option keys now throw

Request_Client_Curl now validates that all entries in the CURL options array have integer keys before calling curl_setopt_array(). Passing a string key (e.g. 'CURLOPT_TIMEOUT' instead of CURLOPT_TIMEOUT) will throw a Request_Exception rather than silently failing.

Kohana::version() now returns “Konine x.y.z”

Kohana::version() returns 'Konine 3.3.9 (karlsruhe)' instead of 'Koseven ...'. If you display or check the version string anywhere, update those checks accordingly.

Breaking Changes from Kohana 3.3.x (Koseven era)

These changes were already present in Koseven and carry forward into Konine.

• Kohana_Kohana_Exception — all functions that received Exception $e have been replaced with just $e. If you are extending this class, update the signature.
• Kohana_URL::site() — has a new parameter $subdomain = NULL. If you extend this method, add it.
• Encrypt module — encryption is now a separate module. Enable it in your bootstrap: 'encrypt' => MODPATH.'encrypt'
• MySQL driver removed — use MySQLi. Update config/database.php to 'type' => 'MySQLi'

New modules included

• Encrypt (separated from system)
• Pagination