PHP News

So finally we are at the end of the 2009 PHP TestFest. It has been an outstanding success with the coverage increasing by about 2.5% overall and 887 new tests contributed in the TestFest SVN repository of which 637 have already been added to PHP CVS. User groups from all over the world have worked hard to make this happen and we thank each and every one of you for your contribution to PHP! You really made a difference to the PHP5.3 release quality. There still are few loose ends to tie up - the TestFest SVN repository will be closed for contributions later this week and the last few tests will be moved into the main PHP repository. Finally, we have 10 elePHPants and 9 TestFest mugs to give out. The winners of mugs and elePHPants will be drawn at random from a list of people who wrote tests; the winner's names will be announced later this month. For those that would like to continue to make a difference by writing tests there are two options. You can simply continue by submitting new tests to the QA mailing list, or, if you have written a significant number of tests you might consider applying for your own PHP CVS (or SVN) ID. In your application you should reference the tests that you have written in support of your application. Last but not least, we would like to thank all of the companies and institutions that sponsored TestFest. These include Combell, Corretgé, Faculdade Impacta de Tecnologia, IBM, iBuildings, Itera, Mayflower, Microsoft, Nexen (Alter Way Group), php|architect, Redpill-Linpro, Steinigke Showtechnic, Verges Council and Zend.

The PHP development team is proud to announce the immediate release of PHP 5.3.0. This release is a major improvement in the 5.X series, which includes a large number of new features and bug fixes. Some of the key new features include: namespaces, late static binding, closures, optional garbage collection for cyclic references, new extensions (like ext/phar, ext/intl and ext/fileinfo), over 140 bug fixes and much more. For users upgrading from PHP 5.2 there is a migration guide available here, detailing the changes between those releases and PHP 5.3.0. Further details about the PHP 5.3.0 release can be found in the release announcement, and the full list of changes are available in the ChangeLog.

The Rio de Janeiro PHP user group is pleased to announce their first PHP'n Rio conference. It will be held July 3rd, 2009 at the Infnet Institute, in Rio de Janeiro. It is a one day mini conference aimed on providing experienced developers and beginners a chance to learn more about PHP frameworks, web applications built in PHP, and the art of testing code. The keynote speaker is Jan Schneider, who will also talk about the Horde project. In addition, we will have sessions about other frameworks and include a PHP TestFest. PHP'n Rio sessions go from 6-9 pm. Then the PHP TestFest follows up until 10 pm. No fees or subscription required. Participation is entirely free! Whether you live here or are around just enjoying the marvelous city, come and join us :) For more information, please visit http://www.phprio.org/phpnrio09 (portuguese only).

The PHP development team is proud to announce the fourth release candidate of PHP 5.3.0 (PHP 5.3.0RC4). This RC focuses on bug fixes and stability improvements, and we hope only minimal changes are required for the next candidate or final stable releases. PHP 5.3.0 is a newly developed version of PHP featuring long-awaited features like namespaces, late static binding, closures and much more. Please download and test these release candidates, and report any issues found. A stable release is expected next week . In case of critical issues we will continue producing weekly RCs. Downloads and further information is available at qa.php.net. See also the work in progress 5.3 upgrade guide.

The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.2.10. This release focuses on improving the stability of the PHP 5.2.x branch with over 100 bug fixes, one of which is security related. All users of PHP are encouraged to upgrade to this release. Security Enhancements and Fixes in PHP 5.2.10: Fixed bug #48378 (exif_read_data() segfaults on certain corrupted .jpeg files). (Pierre) Further details about the PHP 5.2.10 release can be found in the release announcement, and the full list of changes are available in the ChangeLog.

The PHP development team is proud to announce the second release candidate of PHP 5.2.10 (PHP 5.2.10RC2) and the third release candidate of PHP 5.3.0 (PHP 5.3.0RC3). These RCs focuses on bug fixes and stability improvements, and we hope only minimal changes are required for the next candidate or final stable releases. PHP 5.2.10 is a pure maintenance release for providing bugfixes and stability updates. PHP 5.3.0 is a newly developed version of PHP featuring long-awaited features like namespaces, late static binding, closures and much more. Please download and test these release candidates, and report any issues found. Downloads and further information is available at qa.php.net. See also the work in progress 5.3 upgrade guide.

CodeWorks 2009 is a series of two-day conferences for PHP developers and IT managers organized and run by the publishers of php|architect Magazine. CodeWorks will travel to seven locations across the United States between September 22nd and October 5th included. Each two-day event includes a day of in-depth tutorials and a day of conference talks arranged across three different tracks, all presented by the best experts in the business. These locations include: San Francisco, CA (9/22-9/23) Los Angeles, CA (9/24-9/25) Dallas, TX (9/26-9/27) Atlanta, GA (9/28-9/29) Miami, FL (9/30-10/1) Washington, DC/Baltimore Area (10/2-10/3) New York, NY (10/4-10/5) If PHP is your work, your passion or your hobby, CodeWorks is a great way to learn and connect with the greatest community of professionals in the world—and with prices as low as $99 and a generous discount program, a uniquely affordable opportunity for everyone. Remember, each event is limited to 300 attendees and prices increase the closer we get to each event. Get your tickets today before we run out or the price goes up! For more information, visit http://cw.mtacon.com.

The AFUP (Association française des utilisateurs PHP) organizes on November 11th and November 12th at the Cité des Sciences in Paris, France, the Forum PHP for its 9th edition. The PHP Forum 2009 will welcome as a partner alongside the AFUP, the association LeMug.fr (MySQL User Group). On this occasion, AFUP decided to extend the pre-registration at preferential rates, and also postpone the deadline for the call for speakers. To monitor developments and press releases, visit the following link: http://afup.org/pages/forumphp2009/

The Free and Open Source Conference (FrOSCon) in St. Augustin (near Bonn) Germany has evolved to one of the top open source events in Europe. Being organized on a completly voluntary basis, its a meeting point for geeks, open source enthusiasts and OSS companies. As usual, the PHP Usergroup Dortmund (in cooperation with other German usergroups) organizes a PHP project room, with talks and discussions. The call for papers is open until May 23rd. The conference is scheduled for August 22nd - 23rd. Presenters receive at least free entance to thecomplete conference and free coffee in the PHP project room.

TestFest is upon us once again. For those who don't know, this is the time of year where User Groups and individuals donate a little of their time and effort to increasing the test coverage of PHP. Hundreds of thousands of lines of code are working in concert to assemble one of the simplest to learn and fastest running scripting languages in the business. All this is achieved with the expectation that very few bugs will make it into releases and the ones that do will be stomped out quickly, efficiently and will never be heard from again. This is a lofty goal and is only possible through a system of tests designed to continuously evaluate the well-being of PHP. This year the QA Team has been very busy implementing new features and improvements to make the TestFest experience easier and more enjoyable than ever before. Some these improvements include a Subversion repository for test storage and tracking, a Virtual Machine for simple test environment setup, and improved documentation of testing procedures. 2009 is looking to be the most successful TestFest event ever. Over 20 User Groups spanning Belgium, Brazil, Catalonia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, USA and the UK have already registered. This is an incredible response and we still have 2 months left to go. Getting involved couldn't be simpler. Visit the QA TestFest page to find out how you can organize a TestFest event in your community. We are looking forward to seeing your communities tests being committed into PHP.

The Call for Papers for ZendCon 2009 has gone out. This year's conference will be held October 19th - 22nd at the San Jose Convention Center. This year the conference has been expanded to focus on the whole development team and lifecycle of your projects. Therefore not only will there be sessions on 'writing PHP code', but are also emphasizing production processes, frameworks, management information, and the maintenance & tuning of servers. Part of doing this, is to expand the PHP Community to not just include the developers, but also the operations people, the managers, ensure that the whole team comes away from ZendCon with the knowledge to deliver better products. More details on the Call for Papers, Tracks for this years conference, and more can be found at: http://zendcon.com/ Hurry up and submit some proposals, the CfP is only open until May 31st!

The PHP development team is proud to announce the second release candidate of PHP 5.3.0 (PHP 5.3.0RC2). This RC focuses on bug fixes and stability improvements, and we hope only minimal changes are required for the next candidate (RC3). Expect an RC3 in 2-3 weeks, although there will not be major changes so now is a good time to start the final testing of PHP 5.3.0 before it gets released, in order to find possible incompatibilities with your project. Please download and test this release candidate, and report any issues found. Downloads and further information is available at qa.php.net. See also the work in progress 5.3 upgrade guide.

The italian PHP user group (GrUSP), is organizing the 6th phpDay, theitalian conference dedicated to the PHP world (http://www.phpday.it/). This year's edition will be held in Verona on May 15-16th and "softwareintegration with PHP" is going to be the main theme of the event. The phpDay will have three channels: Developers: development approach and techniques Community: focus on open source software and frameworks Enterprise: real case studies for business and enterprises For the benefit of our international visitors, there will be an entiretrack in english, so come and join us in the beautiful city of Verona! To subscribe to the event use our eventbrite page: http://phpday2009.eventbrite.com/

The PHP Development Team would like to announce the availability of a new Windows build for PHP - PHP 5.2.9-2 This release focuses on fixing security flaws in the included OpenSSL library (CVE-2009-0590, CVE-2009-0591 and CVE-2009-0789). The security advisory is available here. The OpenSSL library has been updated to 0.9.8k, which includes fixes for these flaws. Note: Only the Windows binaries are affected. There are no changes to the PHP sources, therefore no source releases are necessary. Updated 9th of April: Added the missing OCI8 DLL

Tickets are now on sale for The Dutch PHP Conference 2009 and we want to invite you to attend. This year's conference will be held from June 11-June13, 2009. DPC09, like it's predecessors, will be held in Amsterdam at the RAI Center. This year we have expanded the conference to two days plus the tutorial day so that we can deliver even more sessions, events and value for your conference budget. Our speaker line up this year includes Andrei Zmievski, Marco Tabini, Derick Rethans, Ben Ramsey, Michelangelo van Dam, and Paul Reinheimer, just to name a few. This year's special keynote speakers are Andrei Zmievski and Owen Byrne as well as a special closing keynote session by Marco Tabini, Ivo Jansch and Cal Evans. You can see the full line up of speakers and sessions at http://phpconference.nl/schedule/. Early Bird pricing is in effect till April 30th, 2009. Save €55-€100 on ticket prices if you purchase before the deadline. For full details on DPC09 and information on how to order your tickets, visit the conference web site at http://phpconference.nl.

Once again we are happy to announce our involvement with the Google Summer of Code project. Be sure to check our program at this years GSoC. We invite everyone to look at the list of ideas for this years GSoC, and get involved. Students are welcome to propose their own ideas, and we will consider all applications that are received before the April 3rd deadline. So, thanks to everyone involved and we look forward to seeing many students join us on this great adventure!

The PHP development team is proud to announce the availability of the first release candidate of PHP 5.3.0 (PHP 5.3.0RC1). This release marks the final phase in a major improvement in the 5.X series, which includes a large number of new features, bug fixes and security enhancements. The key features of the PHP 5.3 branch include: Support for namespaces Under the hood performance improvements Late static binding Lambda functions and closures Syntax additions: NOWDOC, limited GOTO, ternary short cut "?:" and __callStatic() Optional garbage collection for cyclic references Optional mysqlnd PHP native replacement for libmysql Improved windows support including VC6 and VC9 binaries More consistent float rounding Deprecation notices are now handle via E_DEPRECATED (part of E_ALL) instead of the E_STRICT error level Several enhancements to enable more flexiblity in php.ini (and ini parsing in general) New bundled extensions: ext/phar, ext/intl, ext/fileinfo, ext/sqlite3, ext/enchant Countless bug fixes and improvements to existing extensions in particular to: ext/openssl, ext/spl and ext/date This release also drops several extensions and unifies usage of internal APIs. Users should be aware of the following known backwards compatibility breaks: Parameter parsing API unification will cause some functions to behave more or less strict when it comes to type juggling Removed the following extensions: ext/mhash (see ext/hash), ext/msql, ext/pspell (see ext/enchant), ext/sybase (see ext/sybase_ct) Moved the following extensions to PECL: ext/ming, ext/fbsql, ext/ncurses, ext/fdf Removed zend.ze1_compatibility_mode See the upgrading guide for other minor changes All users of PHP, especially those using earlier PHP 5 releases are advised to test this release as the final release of PHP 5.3.0 will eventually obsolete the 5.2 branch of PHP. For users upgrading from previous PHP 5 releases there is an upgrading guide available here, detailing the changes between those releases and PHP 5.3.0. Please also note that we are aware of issues surrounding float/integer handling in some edge cases (some of which have been introduced in PHP 5.2.0), as well as a crash bug in NSAPI, that will be fixed in PHP 5.3.0RC2. These issues however do not prevent wide spread testing of PHP 5.3.0RC1 as users can now rely on the feature set and implementation decisions no longer being changed. For a full list of changes in PHP 5.3.0, see the CVS NEWS file.