PHP 5.5.0 Alpha1 Released

http://www.php.net/archive/2012.php#id2012-11-15-1

by avirambm • 14 years ago

36 49 14 years ago

php.net

kyriakos• 14 years ago

some welcome improvements.

array/string de-referencing will help write less useless lines of code.

ihsw2• 14 years ago

Array/string de-referencing was added in php-5.4.

indeyets3• 14 years ago

5.4 has function-results dereferencing. array/string is new in 5.5

BUGHUNTER• 14 years ago

Why do I have to laugh when I read the new feature list?

Why are people still using this?

One negative aspect of open source is that it prevents failed technologies from disappearing.

pilif2• 14 years ago

> Why do I have to laugh when I read the new feature list?

yeah. Why? What particular items makes you laugh?

moondowner• 14 years ago

Let's start with "support for finally in try/catch blocks". In 2012 this is a new feature?

Kudos6• 14 years ago

I'm not PHP's biggest fan, but you have a strange metric for success.

givan3• 14 years ago

I guess that the reason you don't understand why php is so popular is that you never built anything, you probably just play with the latest cool language building toy projects as a hobby.

Kudos6• 14 years ago

There's no need to be a douche just because the parent was. You're making yourself look like a one language pony.

charliesome• 14 years ago

> THIS IS A DEVELOPMENT PREVIEW - DO NOT USE IT IN PRODUCTION!

Interesting thing to say given that php.net itself runs a development version of PHP.

Kudos6• 14 years ago

They're running a patch level update in production, not a development preview.

There are obviously going to be substantially fewer changes between 5.4.8 - 5.4.9 and 5.4.8 - 5.5.0

roel_v2• 14 years ago

"We also dropped support for Windows XP and 2003."

Well, that sucks. And everybody was laughing/bitching/both at MS for dropping support for them with VS 2012.

jiggy20112• 14 years ago

Windows is really a second class citizen in the PHP world, I imagine that there are very few live deployments of PHP on Windows servers.

Kudos6• 14 years ago

I doubt that, I know of a few companies running PHP on Azure because they like it and others running PHP on Windows servers because their IT dept refuses to support Linux.

skrebbel4• 14 years ago

I've never experienced this. I've spent years of my life developing on PHP on Windows (and mostly, but not only, deploying on Linux). I've never got the impression that Windows is 2nd class like it is for Python.

It comes with well working Apache and IIS bindings by default; the Windows package contains a large number of compiled extensions; a fair set of Windows-specific extensions are enabled by default (including support for COM and .NET interfacing, for instance); command-line PHP (for e.g. Composer or Symfony) works just fine; most if not all posix-ish builtin functions have good Windows implementations.

Also, the built-in HTTP server that was added in PHP 5.4 works just fine on Windows. Really, I have no idea what you're talking about.

That said, I've never looked into whether PHP is as performant or secure on Windows.

shakesbeard2• 14 years ago

That may be true for servers, but certainly not for developers, or rather the average PHP user. Think of all the WAMP installations used to setup a Wordpress page.

nicktelford2• 14 years ago

It strikes me that several of the languages that gained popularity at the turn of the century are having a bit of an identity crisis in the face of their increasing irrelevance. This is especially evident in PHP, but I'm beginning to feel the same about Java in the face of JDK8.

With the new breed of popular languages (Ruby, Python, Scala, Clojure etc.) heavily influenced by functional programming, it seems as if the incumbents are desperate to remain relevant by adding comparable features with little consideration for their impact on the language as a whole.

For me, PHP has become (quite some time ago actually) a "kitchen sink" of a language; if another language has it, it's a fair bet that PHP will try to add it at some point in the future.

skrebbel4• 14 years ago

> For me, PHP has become (quite some time ago actually) a "kitchen sink" of a language; if another language has it, it's a fair bet that PHP will try to add it at some point in the future.

But is that a problem? I've not seen the fancy new features that PHP added in the last years clash with one another yet.

The only con might be that PHP has become a relatively "big" language. Closures (but weirdly done), references, 2 styles of classes, object literals, namespaces, half-assed reflection with support for magic comments, constants that are slower than variables, some magic functions and methods here and there, half of which have lecacy history. That's a fair lot to take in at once.

But once you've taken it in, it simply allows you to write better PHP code, more productively, than 4 years ago. How can that be bad?

mgkimsal• 14 years ago

I think it can be bad not for yourself, but when you have to start dealing with other peoples' code. There's little consensus on 'best practices' for some of the newer features, so it's likely you'll end up having to maintain someone else's code who started using new features (closures, for example) without really understanding how they worked, or how they could best be used.

"goto" in PHP is another example of this. I've heard from many people "well, just don't use it!" but... 6 months from now, I'll be handed a codebase that is replete with goto and other stuff that not only do I not use, but the original author didn't really know how to use either.

Adding more features adds more stuff we all have to be aware of, whether or not you use it.

wheaties• 14 years ago

I worked for several years as a C++ developer. Let me tell you that a "kitchen sink" language is a problem. You have to choose a subset to work in, there's lots of corner cases, and moving from one shop to another will turn you quickly into a language lawyer rather than a programmer.

ck24• 14 years ago

Ugh, now suhosin is TWO versions behind.

Everyone please donate so he doesn't give up!

http://hardened-php.net/donate.45.html

(also: suhosin github page https://github.com/stefanesser/suhosin/issues )

skrebbel4• 14 years ago

An igorant question: Do you know why the Suhosin patch was never included in PHP core?

ck24• 14 years ago

"political" security disagreements between suhosin developer and the php core people.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/568609/why-isnt-suhosin-p...

rmccue• 14 years ago

See ck2's link, and also the most recent discussion: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.alioth.pkg-php-ma...

bpatrianakos3• 14 years ago

At this point I don't think its smart to wait. It's time to move on and start looking at alternative ways to lock down PHP. I'm running 5.4 and had to make the difficult decision to upgrade my server without it. There can be PHP security without Suhosin. And maybe I have bad information but hasn't there not been a single peep out of the Suhosin project for a seriously long time?

ck24• 14 years ago

He did make it work with php 5.4.0 when the branch first came out.

That was "only" six months ago so it's not forever.

Unless you do not use any third party code and have your own code audited, it's foolish not to run with suhosin.

I'm still trying to get over the naked feeling of running without magic quotes in 5.4 when using third-party code.

ck24• 14 years ago

BTW:

5.4.9 final will be tagged next week, November 19th and released on Thursday the 22nd.

Changelog:

https://raw.github.com/php/php-src/PHP-5.4.9/NEWS

j_col2• 14 years ago

Thanks to everyone working on PHP for all of their hard work. Looking forward to using that new password hashing API in future production systems in particular, once 5.5 goes final.

jtreminio• 14 years ago

You can use it right now: https://packagist.org/packages/ircmaxell/password-compat

j_col2• 14 years ago

Thanks for that!

komlon3• 14 years ago

What's the link to their build server so I can see how many test the latest build has failed?

indeyets3• 14 years ago

You mean this one? http://gcov.php.net/viewer.php?version=PHP_5_5

komlon3• 14 years ago

I've never seen one of their builds not report multiple errors!

dkhenry• 14 years ago

Where is the list of deprecated features? At this point PHP really doesn't need new features as much as it needs an internal cleanup of its API's and Libraries and a complete re-write of its "VM"

indeyets3• 14 years ago

This is the closest thing, I guess: https://github.com/php/php-src/blob/PHP-5.5/UPGRADING

PHP 5.5.0 Alpha1 Released

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