For those who’ve been around the PHP community for a while, you’ll recall the successful PHP TestFest events that began after a discussion at PHP Quebec in 2008. Many user groups and mentors signed on to host and help with events, and a lot of folks became first-time contributors to the PHP project, helping improve our code coverage. It ran strong in a global sense from 2008 to 2010. After that, various groups (particularly the Brazilian groups) have continued the tradition.

A few months ago, at php[tek] in Atlanta, I mentioned to Michelangelo that I’d love to bring back PHP TestFest. Sammy had given an excellent talk on writing PHPT tests, and Gemma tweeted a link to the old PHP TestFest wiki page. From there, things snowballed.

We’re bringing back PHP TestFest!

The PHP TestFest will run for 4 months this year: September through December. This should give groups plenty of time to plan and prepare one or more local events. In early January, we will award prizes; if your organization/company is interested in offering products or services as prizes, let us know (send email to sponsors@phptestfest.org).

This time around, I’ve set up a dedicated website at PHPTestFest.org and Google Group for discussion. We also have the #phptestfest channel on Freenode IRC. All are encouraged to contribute to the website and tools repository. We need technical tutorials, as well as tutorials from veteran TestFest organizers on how to lead successful PHP TestFest events. Additionally, I’ve provided a stub for a console application in the repository, and I’d love to see that evolve into a robust tool for helping people write and contribute PHPT tests.

I’ll be updating the “Getting Started” page on the PHP TestFest website soon with this information and more, so keep posted.

Let’s get to work on improving code coverage of the PHP language!

Special thanks to Sammy for letting us use “Wooble” as a testing mascot.

This announcement was cross-posted to the php-qa, ug-admins, and phptestfest mailing lists.