Latest information on PHP upcoming releases

Question

I'm trying to track the progress of PHP 5.3 and PHP 6 and I occassionally see blogs posting information but there doesn't seem to be an authoritative source. Does anybody know where there is an official summary of possible new features?

EDIT: There are some meeting notes that have been around for years... as far as I can tell this meeting has long since been superceded and nearly all of the other information out there is based entirely on that meeting.

I'm more looking for where the PHP developers themselves record the changes that they are currently making rather than the long-term vision.

Answer 1

Your best bet are probably these meeting notes: http://php.net/~derick/meeting-notes.html

For a summary of the main features, check out: http://jero.net/articles/php6

For a quick rundown: Unicode support, removal of previously deprecated code, namespaces and late static binding

Answer 2

i think the wiki is your best bet http://wiki.php.net/

Answer 3

The php architects pro php podcast discusses the topics which came up on the development mailing list every episode. While there is no written transcript, it is a good start.

Answer 4

Another good idea is to hang around in the IRC chatrooms (freenode mainly). Many of the devs are in there.

The PHP5 NEWS file tracks all the changes made to PHP 5.3 and similary the PHP6 NEWS holds a log of PHP6 related news. The Wiki is still one of your best bets for info though.

Answer 5

Most of the features slated for 6.0 have been instead included in 5.3.

Things like: Namespaces, Closures, Late static binding, and a garbage-collector upgrade that can cope with circular references in object hierarchies.

Answer 6

@Ross: Another good idea is to hang around in the IRC chatrooms (freenode mainly). Many of the devs are in there.

PHP hangs on EFnet - #php.pecl

In general, if you want information, IRC (EFnet, webchat here) is a pretty good start, then maybe subscribe to the wiki, it's very up to date and you may want to read the php.internals mailinglist (also available via RSS). Last but not least, there is Planet PHP, which picks up all the important blogs.

On top of what I mentioned, there are a bunch of other topic mailinglists available, check this link: http://news.php.net/

Answer 7

There are php conventions and what not, i'm sure you could attend one and catch up on all the latest. See their homepage: http://www.php.net/index.php

Answer 8

The PHP Wiki to-do lists have long lists of features and updates for each alpha, release, etc.

For example, here's what's already in PHP 5.3 (checked off) as well as some uncompleted items that still need to be finished before 5.3's final release in October (projected).

Of course, once 5.3 is out I expect you'll see a LOT written about it. Check out the Zend Devzone for some great articles, too: