Christopher Jones has a (very) quick post today about the release of the latest version of the PECL OCI drivers - 1.2.5.

Hang on, weren't we up to OCI8 version 1.3? Well, yes, but that's Beta bordering on Production. In the meantime, I wanted to make the OCI8 bug fixes from PHP 5.2.6 available in a "Production" release and keep PECL OCI8 1.2 in sync with PHP 5.2. The changelog is here.

Updates include bug fixes for cursor leaking, a LOB leak, a problem with collection creation and an update to the compile option for the Instant Client to look for RPMs.

As per this announcement on the Zend Developer Zone website, the Zend Framework group has released the latest version of their application framework - Zend Framework 1.5.

Zend Technologies, Inc., the PHP Company, today announced the availability of version 1.5 of Zend Framework, the popular open source PHP framework [...] Additional features in Zend Framework 1.5 include support for several new services and enhancements to already popular features that make building modern web sites easier and faster than ever.

Updates include changes to Zend_Form, Zend_Layout, the LDAP authentication component, an update to the Lucene support, more Ajax functionality and much more. There's also a new service Zend has launched to provide more "official support" for developers/companies using the framework. You can find out more information about the service here.

The SitePoint PHP Blog has a new post from Matthew Magain spotlighting the release of the latest version of one of the more popular PHP CMS systems out there - Drupal 6.

The Drupal development team surprised everyone when they released version 6.0 last week, ahead of schedule.

Over sixteen-hundred issues were corrected and major changes (like usability improvements, security and an expanded development framework) were introduced. They've even created a screencast to help you set up your own CMS site even faster than before.

Find out more on the Drupal homepage.

In this new post to his blog today, Tony Bibbs asks a question that pops up every once and a while surrounding the Zend Framework - why don't they use the PEAR package distribution methods to handle the releases of the framework? (Specifically as pertains to PEAR channels)

Why hasn't Zend provided an official PEAR channel? In my search for an answer I found this response from "bkarwin": No, we have no plans to offer ZF under a PEAR channel or other piece-by-piece distribution method. Assuming bkarwin was working in some half-official capacity at Zend I'd simply ask "Why not?".

Tony wonders why, if the PEAR group (and project) has such a good thing already in place, it can't just be adapted to make releases of the various components of the framework simpler than having to wait for a whole new release to get the fixes the users need.

The CodeIgniter development group has released the latest version of the framework - CodeIgniter 1.6.1:

Version 1.6.1 is primarily a maintenance release, but does bring a handful of nice feature additions and enhancements. After a very successful 1.6.0 release, a series of bugs have been squashed and enhancements have been made that we wanted to roll out as a formal release.

The update process is just replacing a few files from your current installation. Check out the Changelog for more information on the updates made and, if you're not quite sure what you're doing on the update, check out their handy update instructions.

As the Zend Developer Zone points out, the preview release for the next stable version of the Zend Framework has been posted - ZF 1.5.0 Preview.

This release showcases features that will be introduced in the final 1.5 release. The intent of this release is to give our users access to the latest features in Zend Framework and to improve the overall quality of the production release through the feedback we receive.

Some of the new feature in this upcoming release include:

• New Zend_Form component with support for AJAX-enabled form elements
• Infocard, OpenID, and LDAP authentication adapters
• Partial, Placeholder, Action, and Header view helpers for advanced view composition and rendering
• New Zend_Layout component for automating and facilitating site layouts

It also adds functionality to currently existing features and fixes several bugs in the process.