I've just packaged PHP 5.1.2RC1, the first release candidate for the next 5.1 version. A small holiday present for all PHP users, from the the PHP developers ;-). This is primarily a bug fixing release with its major points being: Many fixes to the strtotime() function, over 10 bugs have been resolved. A fair number of fixes to PDO and its drivers New OCI8 that fixes large number of bugs backported from head. A final fix for Apache 2 crash when SSI includes are being used. A number of crash fixes in extensions and core components. XMLwriter & Hash extensions were added and enabled by default. The sources can be downloaded from: http://downloads.php.net/ilia/php-5.1.2RC1.tar.bz2 df9e548b8c9275e510e25f2b3de2629c http://downloads.php.net/ilia/php-5.1.2RC1.tar.gz a2b3fd6e6115cee4bb8f5b3d5aeef66b Win32 binaries should be available shortly from http://downloads.php.net/ilia/ as well.

Following the “Release early, release often” mantra, PHP 5.1.1 was released today. The main causes for this release are four regressions in behavior introduces by PHP 5.1.0, which include: Native date class is withdrawn to prevent namespace conflict with PEAR's date package. Fixed fatal parse error when the last line of the script is a PHP comment. eval() hangs when the code being evaluated ends with a comment. Usage of \{$var} in PHP 5.1.0 resulted in the output of {$var} instead of the $var variable's value enclosed in {}. The fifth reason being a refinement of a cURL open_basedir/safe_mode security fix, to improve the checks surrounding the file: wrapper handling. The new packages and win32 PECL binaries for PHP 5.1.1 can be found here: http://www.php.net/downloads.php Now on to the long overdue rant ;-) The initial and probably the main reason for the PHP 5.1.1 release in such a hurry was a rather interesting problem. One of the features introduced by 5.1.0 was the addition of th...

Yes, it is true, PHP 5.1.0 is finally out! The packages and win32 binaries are available at: http://www.php.net/downloads.php Some of the release highlights are: A complete rewrite of date handling code, with improved timezone support. Significant performance improvements compared to PHP 5.0.X. PDO extension is now enabled by default. Over 30 new functions in various extensions and built-in functionality. Bundled libraries, PCRE and SQLite upgraded to latest versions. Over 400 various bug fixes. PEAR upgraded to version 1.4.5 8 security fixes of varying "criticality" The full changelog is here and the official release announcement can be viewed from http://www.php.net/release_5_1_0.php

A few days ago I received an e-mail confirming acceptance of my talks for annual PHP Conference in Montreal, yippee! Going to speak in Montreal is always fun, the organizers always find something entertaining for us to do. PHP Québec also holds very fond memories for me, being the first PHP conference I had a chance to speak at back in 2003, and 2006 will be the 4th year in a row speaking there. I guess they haven’t grown tired of me just yet ;-) At the conference I will be giving a single talk on PDO as part of the database track and doing a workshop on PHP security. I hope to make both of those as informative and entertaining possible, so if those topics hold your interest, be sure to attend. You can find additional details about the conference on the PHP Québec website.

On my way home from the Frankfurt conference right now, according to the in-plane TV we are somewhere just south of Greenland at the moment. That's right, this blog entry is being written from an average altitude of 30,000 feet (9144 kilometers), go go Lufthansa that offers relatively cheap wifi ($30 USD) for entire flight, COOL! That and the fact that they serve free alcohol on economy class, makes this flight even more enjoyable. I would like to thank the folks are Software & Support for inviting me to their conference, it is quite enjoyable, not to mention quite big, much larger then an average PHP con. I've yet again had the privilege to meet with many people with whom I've only conversed online and met good friends whom I have not seen since previous conferences. To those of you who've attended my sessions, or had missed them for some reason, the slides are finally up, wifi on a plane is MUCH better then wifi at the conference :P You can download them here: PHP Security Talk: PDF PPT PHP 5 OOP...