The official PHP.net site has posted an announcement about the latest release in the PHP 7.3.0 pre-release cycle: PHP 7.3.0 alpha 1.

PHP team is glad to announce the release of the first PHP 7.3.0 version, PHP 7.3.0 Alpha 1. This starts the PHP 7.3 release cycle, the rough outline of which is specified in the PHP Wiki. For source downloads of PHP 7.3.0 Alpha 1 please visit the download page.

Please carefully test this version and report any issues found in the bug reporting system. Please DO NOT use this version in production, it is an early test version.

For more information about the changes in this release, check out the NEWS file and the UPGRADING file for information on what needs to change between this and the last PHP 7.2.x release.

The first release on the path to PHP7 has officially been released according to this new post on the main PHP.net website - PHP 7.0.0 Alpha 1.

The PHP development team announces the immediate availability of PHP 7.0.0 Alpha 1. This release marks the beginning of the PHP 7 major series. All users of PHP are encouraged to test this version carefully, and report any bugs and incompatibilities in the bug tracking system. PHP 7.0.0 Alpha 1 comes with new version of the Zend Engine with features. [...] For more information on the new features and other changes, you can read the NEWS file or the or the UPGRADING file for a complete list of upgrading notes. These files can also be found in the release archive.

As with other alpha PHP releases, you can download this preview version from the downloads page or windows.php.net/qa website for the binaries.

The official start of the PHP 5.5.0 release process has started today with a new post from David Soria Parra and Julien Pauli about the release of the "alpha 1" version of the release now being available for testing. (Note: this is an alpha release and is by no means suitable for real-life usage).

As announced a few weeks ago, we tagged PHP 5.5.0alpha1 on Tuesday. This release marks the start of 5.5.0 release process. [...] This release includes a dozen new features, such as Generators, List support in foreach. the simplified password API, and many more. Thanks to everyone working 5.5.

The plan is to put this out there for testing and then tag "alpha 2" on the 27th and make the actual release on Thursday, the 29th. If you'd like to help with the testing, download the alpha and run your tests (including the "make test" on install). Windows builds are also available at windows.php.net/qa.

Content no longer valid

As was previously mentioned by Christopher Jones, the PHP 5.3 branch is now under a feature freeze. Lukas Smith has posted a few more details about the upcoming release.

Last thursday was the begin of the feature freeze phase. Well its not really a hard feature freeze in the sense that we still have plans for a few new features and tweaks, but it means the end of the "maintainers freedom" that usually rules PHP development more or less.

New features will have to go through either him or Johannes to be included and they are doing their best to get the alpha 1 release of this new version out by July 31st.

Lukas is also trying a more unconventional approach to bug fixes to try to get the major ones knocked out first - posting them as a comment to this blog post. So far, no comments on bugs have been added, but there are a good number to get through. To help narrow it down he's also put out a plea to developers out there to help validate current bugs to potentially knock off a few of the ones that can be marked bogus.