This November in PHP: PHP 7, Symfony 3, eZ Platform and Drupal 8

November of 2015 is shaping up to be an exciting month for developers working with the PHP language. Four significant projects are expected to be launched in the next thirty days: PHP 7.0.0, Symfony3, eZ Platform and Drupal 8.

PHP 7.0.0

PHP is the biggest revamp to the language and runtime in over ten years as PHP 5.0 was released in July 2004. Many PHP 6 (it was never launched) features were taken to PHP 5 in the form of point releases, but PHP 7.0.0 is the largest single release in a while.

In addition to language features, the PHP 7.0.0 release improves performance and lowers memory usage with an improved runtime. It's mostly backwards compatible with older versions, but there are some functionalities and backwards compatibility breaks that need to be tested. The project offers a guide to help you: Migrating from PHP 5.6.x to PHP 7.0.x

PHP 7.0.0 is scheduled for release on the 12th of november:

The PHP 7.0.0 general availability (GA) release is going to be tagged on November 10th and issued on November 12th.

Symfony 3.0

Symfony is a collection of components and a framework. The team puts a lot of weight on reliability and stable release schedules. This november two releases will be made of the framework (and components): Symfony 2.8 and Symfony 3.0.

Both versions will share the feature set (including Autowiring, Polyfilling, Guard Security and more) and the major difference with 3.0 is removing depricated functionality. More features will be added in future versions as new development moves to the Symfony3 line. Learn more about the changes behind the scenes from these slides from Nicolas Grekas: Migrating to Symfony 3.0

No date has been announced for this duo of updates, but the release of Symfony3 is set for November 2015:

So, Symfony 3.0 will be released in November 2015 and the first 3.x long term release will be 3.3 to be released in May 2017.

eZ Platform

eZ Platform is a Content Management System built with the Symfony Framework. Three years after the first release of the eZ Publish 5, the first version to adopt Symfony Framework, the system is now ready to shed all legacy PHP code dating back to 2002.

eZ Platform offers a content repository and an adminstration interface to Symfony framework applications, enhancing the framework by offering domain mapping, media, user and content management and an integrated Solr search engine. Learn more about eZ Platform: eZ Platform: A CMS built with the Symfony Framework

The system has reached beta stability with a launch scheduled for November:

Once the release candidate is out, we will mostly stabilize the software, with the goal to come with the first stable release of both eZ Platform and eZ Studio in early November. The exact date depends on the feedback we receive and our findings from the beta

Drupal 8

After years of hard work and some delays the Drupal 8 release date has finally been set. This major release is an extensive rework of the system, with lower level functionalities making extensive use of modern PHP principles and components from Symfony and other projects.

Drupal 8 is a popular CMS used by millions of web sites around the globe. The vibrant community and active participation has lead to an impressive contributor number of over 3000 individuals. In addition to low level work on developer faced features like improved theming and bundled views module there are end-user improvements with WYSIWYG editing out of the box and others too.

Drupal 8 is set for release on November 19th 2015:

Based on our experience with our successful release candidates, we are confident to announce that Drupal 8.0.0 will be released on November 19, 2015! Until then, we will continue publishing Drupal 8 release candidates with the latest fixes.

Written by Jani Tarvainen on Sunday November 1, 2015

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