
PHP 5.5.0 Alpha1 Released - avirambm
http://www.php.net/archive/2012.php#id2012-11-15-1
======
ck2
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> )

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

~~~
ck2
"political" security disagreements between suhosin developer and the php core
people.

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/568609/why-isnt-
suhosin-p...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/568609/why-isnt-suhosin-part-
of-the-php-core)

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

~~~
j_col
Thanks for that!

------
roel_v
"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.

~~~
jiggy2011
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.

~~~
skrebbel
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.

~~~
jiggy2011
I suppose it depends on which subset of functions you are using.

I developed a PHP app on Windows which did mailsending, push notifications
(APE) and UTF8 encoding. All of these things behaved differently between
operating systems.

~~~
skrebbel
Mail sending? Hmm, curious. Sure, there's STMP-settings in php.ini vs
sendmail, but that can't be a show stopper, right? Also, PEAR::Mail did the
rest for me, back in the days. I'm sure there's even better options these
days.

I'm also curious how UTF8 was different. After all, since PHP arrays are
simply binary arrays, how can it be different?

------
nicktelford
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.

~~~
skrebbel
> _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?

~~~
wheaties
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.

~~~
nicktelford
Thank you for this; C++ is exactly the language that I should have referenced.
It's a for-bearer for what PHP is to become.

------
ck2
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>

------
dkhenry
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"

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

------
charliesome
> _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.

~~~
Kudos
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

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

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

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

~~~
komlon
I spoke too soon:

Build Status: OK Last Build Time: 45 hours

Compile Warnings: 1116 Code Coverage: 70.4% Test Failures: 103 Expected Test
Failures: 44 Valgrind Reports: 59

------
kyriakos
some welcome improvements.

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

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

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

------
BUGHUNTER
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.

~~~
givan
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.

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

~~~
givan
PHP being popular is a fact, that doesn't mean that I use or advise using php
only.

And the fact that lots of people that don't understand that syntactic sugar is
not the only thing that matter in a language always bash popular languages
that are not "cool" is a very common symptom that describes my previous
comment very well.

And there is a third fact, that "sensitive" people like you that don't like
strong opinions like mine feel the urge to disagree in a way that adds no
value to the conversation and ironically call others "douche".

~~~
Kudos
You extrapolated some fantasy and strawmanned the parent, that makes you a
douche.

> I guess that the reason you don't understand why php is so popular is that
> you never built anything.

What.

> you probably just play with the latest cool language building toy projects
> as a hobby.

Is that meant to be disparaging? It reeks of someone who doesn't know a whole
lot beyond the PHP ecosystem. There isn't a dichotomy of PHP and then "cool"
languages.

I think PHP is useful in certain scenarios but acting like a zealot (or as you
like to call it having "strong opinions") over it is fucking stupid.

~~~
givan
> What.

So I guess you also don't understand why PHP is popular.

> It reeks of someone who doesn't know a whole lot beyond the PHP ecosystem.

You are now making some "fantasy" assumptions.

You missed the point from the beginning and now you are trying to take this
into mud with all kind of assumptions and insults.

I'm stopping here.

~~~
Kudos
Of course I understand why PHP is popular, I've used it for long enough. My
expression of exasperation was at the jumps of logic you were making.

