On thePHP.cc site today they have a quick post that looks ahead at the future of the PHP language towards PHP version 8 and one planned feature - the deprecation of some multi-byte character handling.

Since the attempt to create a Unicode-based PHP implementation has failed, PHP 7 – just like PHP 5 – does not handle Unicode strings natively. The commonly used UTF-8 encoding, for example, is a multibyte encoding, as opposed to ASCII, where each character is represented by one single byte.

[...] UTF-8 is a variable-length encoding and each character (code point, to be exact) is represented by one to four bytes. For ASCII characters, everything works smoothly, because UTF-8 is a superset of ASCII. The problems start with non-ASCII characters.

The post covers some of the common issues with multi-byte Unicode characters in PHP and the role that the iconv and mbstring functions play in their handling. It shows how the mbstring handling allows developers to "cheat a little" and where, when PHP 8 comes around, the main issue will lie: the deprecation of thembstring.func_overload setting in the php.ini.

On the Zend Framework blog Matthew Weier O'Phinney has a new post covering the state of the Zend Framework project and how it relates to PHP 7.1.

When we announced Zend Framework 3 last year, one of the changes was setting the minimum supported PHP version to 5.6. Our initial plan was to support 5.6 until it reaches end-of-life, which occurs 31 December 2018.

PHP 5.6, however, stopped receiving active support almost five months ago, on 19 Jan 2017. This means that it is no longer receiving bugfixes, only critical security fixes. As such, a number of contributors have been pushing for us to up our minimum supported version to support only actively supported PHP versions, which would mean only PHP 7 versions.

[...] Our view is that the new features in PHP 7 will allow us to simplify our code dramatically, reduce bugs (primarily by increasing type safety), make our code more easily maintainable (less code required to check types; less repetitive code), provide stronger and more predictable interfaces to our users, and simultaneously provide users access to more and better language features.

He also talks briefly about their thoughts about HHVM support and if it makes sense to keep moving forward with it (given the small percentage of their user base). He then lays out a plan for the framework moving forward that includes the release of PHP 7.1+ only components and security patches on 5.6 versions until end of life.

On the Zend Framework blog they've posted the roadmap and latest updates on the work being done for the next major version of the framework: Zend Framework 3.

In October, while at ZendCon, I presented a talk on Zend Framework 3 entitled "Components, PSR-7, and Middleware: Zend Framework 3." You can view it online, but this post discusses current status, details some decisions, and points to the work still to be done. It's a long read; grab a warm beverage, maybe some popcorn, and take your time.

They start by outlining some of the major concepts that ZF3 integrates and are key to how it will handle requests:

• the component-based system it's built on, making major use of Composer-style packages and installation techniques
• using the PSR-7 standard for handling of HTTP requests and responses
• the use of middleware to modify the request/response and add logic

Finally, they get into the overall view and roadmap for the framework. They talk about the ServiceManager/EventManager, the role middleware plays in the request dispatching and the goal of reducing dependencies. The post ends with a look at the improvements they're striving for with new and better documentation and the next steps in the roadmap for the coming months.

The Zend Framework project has a new post to their blog today officially announcing the roadmap for version three of the popular PHP framework.

The most often-asked questions we get around the Zend Framework project include: Where is Zend Framework heading? When will Zend Framework 3 be released? What changes and enhancements should we expect? Since inception, our goal for Zend Framework has been to further the art of PHP and ensure our users concentrate on the business logic of their application rather than wasting time reinventing the plumbing. The plumbing is Zend Framework’s job.

We have built an incredibly powerful framework with Zend Framework 2 that met its key goals of flexibility, consistency and testability. However, the world has changed since ZF2 was released, and the project needs to move with the times. With that in mind, we have gathered feedback from our users and core contributors to map the path forward. Zend Framework 3 will be an evolution from ZF2, concentrating on simplicity, reusability, and performance.

The post lists out a few of the things involved in this roadmap including separating components into individual, versioned projects and embracing the concept and functionality of middleware. If you'd like to get involved or just find out about the latest on this upcoming version, be sure you either join the zf-contributors mailing list or come to the #zftalk.dev channel on the Freenode IRC network.

In this new post Leonid Mamchenkov looks at the latest version of a PHP framework that's been around since the PHP4 days, CakePHP, and some of the improvements that will come with version three.

Currently, I am at the start of a couple of projects, which require a bit of the future support. CakePHP 2.x can handle the job now, but I’m looking more into the next 3-5 years. And that’s why I’m looking at CakePHP 3, which is still in the early development stage, with an alpha release coming not too long from now (have a look at the CakePHP 3 roadmap document). Let’s have a look at the high level goals for CakePHP 3.

Among the items he mentions are things like:

• The adoption of broader PHP community standards
• An increase in modularity
• Developing for PHP 5.4+
• Composer support (and using PSR-4 autoloading)
• The removal of some more complex, brittle code in favor of simpler, easier to extend options

Check out the roadmap and migration guides for full information.

In their latest post the HHVM project (of Facebook) has laid out the next six months ahead for the development and progression on the project. In it they talk some about their "themes" and overall Open Source goals planned for the first part of 2014.

The HHVM team has just wrapped up its planning for the first half of 2014. We’d like to share our plans, providing you a bit of context. We’ve been making steady progress on HHVM’s compatibility with PHP in the wild, but we still have a lot of work ahead of us. We’re using unit test pass rates as a proxy for success measurement, but you can help by adding HHVM to your Travis configuration, and reporting bugs and issues through GitHub. We are resourced to help support a couple of major HHVM deployments, which we hope has the side effect of exposing us to “non-Facebook” deployment and maintenance challenges.

We are also going to push for a more open development model, with the goal of increasing our community participation. We’ll have more to say on what this means later on. Stay tuned!

They also cover some of the work being done to increase the overall efficiency, reducing CPU time and memory consumption. There's also mention of work being done on a guide to "hacking" in the HHVM, reducing some complexity in the compiler and the conversion to a full HNI extension interface.

On the Symfony project's blog today there's a new post from Fabien Potencier talking about some updates that have been made to the Symfony website.

There's a few things that got an update including:

• Translations that were added to the main site
• A method of aggregation for Symfony-related blogs
• A Roadmap notification system that lets you set up email notifications on major roadmap changes and releases.

They're still working on the translations, but if you'd like to help you can contribute to their github repository.

PHPClasses.org has released their latest episode in their "Lately in PHP" podcast series, Episode #39 - "PHP 5.6 Roadmap and New Features".

ow that PHP 5.5 stable versions were released, it is time to plan the roadmap of features for PHP 5.6. This was the main topic discussed by Manuel Lemos and Cesar Rodas in episode 39 of the Lately in PHP podcast. They also commented about a new PHP core developer that was hired by SmugMug to work full time on PHP development as a sort of sponsorship of the PHP project.

You can listen to this latest episode either though the in-page player, by downloading the mp3 or by watching the video of the live recording.

On the Symfony blog, there's an announcement from Fabien Potencier about the framework's new release process (details here).

To make a long story short, Symfony now manages its releases through a time-based model. If you want to learn more about the Symfony release process, or about the first Symfony Long Term Support release, or about the release date for next version of Symfony, please take a minute to read the new process. You are also going to learn when we will start working on Symfony 3!

The full details also include a timeline they've projected for the upcoming 2.x versions of the framework, right up to the 3.0 release. The goal of the process is to provide transparency and predictability to the Symfony frmework's releases with 6 month releases and and open plan presented to the community up front.

The Bakery (the CakePHP site) has posted a list of things to come in the 3.0 release of the popular PHP framework.

Since its creation, more than 7 years ago, CakePHP has grown with a life of its own. Its main goal has always been to empower developers with tools that are both easy to learn and use, leverage great libraries requiring low documentation and low dependencies too. We've had several big releases along these years and an ever growing community. Being one of the most popular frameworks out there and probably the first one (!) we have also gotten a lot of criticism from the developer community in general. We have, though, accepted it and learnt from our mistakes to keep building the best PHP framework there is.

Some of the coming improvements include:

• Drop support for 5.2.x and support 5.4+ only
• Use traits were possible and makes sense
• Model layer rewrite
• Improve Router
• Improve bootstrapping process to allow more developer control and better performance

You can find more about the current features of the framework on it's main project site.