Raphael Stolt has a new post to his site for the PHP on Windows users out there helping you to keep your integration tests green when little things (like line ending differences) can cause issues between the Windows and unix-based platforms.

Lately on a Windows system, some failing integration tests for CLI commands utilising the Symfony Console component caused me some blip headaches by PHPUnit insisting that two strings are not identical due to different line endings. The following post documents the small steps I took to overcome these headaches.

He starts with the error message that the failing test was giving, a slightly unhelpful response with the "actual" and "expected" values looking basically the same. He suspected it to be something different with the encoding or line endings (a common issue between Windows and Linux platforms). To confirm his suspicions he looked deeper into the Symfony Console code and, on locating the difference, extended the "CommandTester" class to automatically disable the "decorated" setting across all tests.

If you've been around the PHP community for any length of time, chances are you've seen the ElePHPant stuffed animals that have been floating around conferences and living on developers' desks. Well, the Zend Framework has decided to create some of their own - a more green variety. Pádraic Brady has posted about them.

Blue PHP ElePHPant plush toys are so yesterday. Ben Scholzen (you might know him as DASPRiD on IRC/Twitter) is now taking pre-orders for green Zend Framework ElePHPants. Yes, they are green. Yes, they have “ZF” printed on them. No, they are not a repository of Zend Framework knowledge. We tried really hard, but Intel insists that magical toys from the future are not real. Ben needs to reach a minimum production order of 1000 small ZF ElePHPants and is currently hovering at around 200 after the weekend. If you, your user group, or your pet poodle want one of these, visit Ben’s pre-order page for more information.

As of the time of this post, the orders for these elePHPants is at about 190 out of the 1000 needed, so if you'd like to pick some up, get over and put in your pre-order now!