Nova Kontainer Laravel Package

Product Decisions This Supports

• Dependency currency / upgrade planning: v2.1.2 is a patch-level release whose only change is "adhere to readonly," i.e. the package now applies PHP's readonly modifier consistently across its internals. There are no new features and no public API changes to design around, so this is maintenance hygiene rather than a roadmap input.
• Build vs. buy: a package that actively tracks modern PHP language features (readonly properties, typed properties) is a signal of a maintained codebase. That lowers the risk of adopting it instead of hand-rolling equivalent value objects or DTOs in-house.
• Platform floor (the one decision this release does touch): readonly requires PHP 8.1+. If any environment in your matrix (CI, staging, a legacy service, a client-hosted deployment) is still on PHP 8.0, this patch is effectively a hard floor raise even though the version number suggests otherwise. Confirm the package's composer.json php constraint before bumping.
• Feature/architecture use cases it enables: immutable value objects, config/DTO carriers, and cache/state snapshots where accidental mutation is a real defect class — readonly enforcement moves those guarantees from convention to the language.
• Not a driver of: new product capabilities, pricing, or customer-facing roadmap. Treat as an engineering-hygiene line item.

When to Consider This Package

Consider adopting (or bumping to) this release when:

• Your Laravel application and all deployed environments run PHP 8.1 or newer, and CI enforces that floor.
• You want immutable data carriers (DTOs, value objects, settings objects) with compiler-enforced immutability rather than team convention or final/docblock discipline.
• You already depend on the package and are on 2.x — this is a low-risk patch; take it as part of routine dependency maintenance and let your test suite validate it.
• You value a maintainer who keeps pace with the language; sustained readonly/type adoption is a reasonable proxy for codebase health.

Look elsewhere or defer when:

• You are pinned to PHP 8.0 or below — you cannot take this line of releases, and you should check whether the 2.x branch as a whole has moved its floor, not just this patch.
• You need mutable models (in-place updates, setters, heavy hydration/reflection tricks, or serializers that write back into objects). Readonly internals constrain how you can copy-with-changes; expect withX()-style patterns instead of setters.
• Your code or third-party extensions subclass or monkey-patch package classes. Readonly properties cannot be reinitialized outside the declaring scope, so inheritance-based customization can break at runtime in ways static analysis may miss.
• You need documented feature deltas to justify the upgrade — there are none here, so don't schedule a release around it; fold it into a routine bump.

How to Pitch It (Stakeholders)

For executives (one paragraph): This is a routine maintenance release for a Laravel/PHP dependency — no new features, no behavior changes, no customer-visible impact. Its practical effect is to confirm the package requires PHP 8.1+, which we should verify against our hosting and CI matrix before merging. Recommendation: approve as part of normal dependency upkeep; no budget, headcount, or roadmap impact.

For engineering: v2.1.2 aligns the package with PHP readonly semantics. Expect tighter immutability guarantees on the package's internal objects and fewer classes of accidental-mutation bugs downstream. Two things to check before merging: (1) the composer.json PHP constraint and our minimum supported version — readonly is 8.1+, so this quietly raises the floor; (2) any subclassing, reflection, or serialization code that writes into package objects, since readonly properties cannot be reinitialized from outside the declaring class. Run the full suite plus any integration tests that hydrate or clone package objects; if green, ship it in the next routine dependency batch. No migration guide is needed — patch release, no public API changes.

Ask: confirm the PHP 8.1+ floor, then merge as a standard patch bump.