WordPress, by far one of the most popular PHP-based applications out there has a new post to their site officially stating a change in core development practices:

In a little over a decade, we’ve made twenty five thousand commits to WordPress. WordPress (along with the web itself) has come a long way, but our development workflow has remained largely the same.

As a part 3.7, I’ll be leading an effort to revamp and streamline our development workflow. We’re going to bring all of our core components - our code, our tests, and our tooling - under one roof. Developers will be able to use and improve the tools we’re already working with day-to-day, and we’ll be able to add new tools to make working with WordPress even easier.

We’re also making sure that any changes are compatible with our current workflow, so you won’t have to change the way you work. These changes won’t break any existing checkouts or scripts that use core.svn.wordpress.org.

The post also details some of the new things they're doing to improve the development and deployment process. This includes the creation of a "develop.svn.wordpress.org" SVN repository to hold all new WordPress development. There's also a new build process involving a tool called "bumpbot" and the new addition of Grunt.

The announcement has finally come - the PHP project has officially moved to git!

The migration of the PHP source code from Subversion to Git is complete. You can clone or fork the source from our GitHub mirror, and we also now support pull requests made via GitHub. The source is also available via git.php.net, and full instructions on cloning the php-src tree can be found at php.net/git. One immediate benefit is that future PHP release tags will be signed by the PHP development team. We will be releasing GPG keys for verification purposes in the next few days. More information on the migration and the new workflow can be found at the Moving to Git FAQ on the PHP Wiki.

This move does not include the manuals yet, but that's coming soon. Be sure to follow these steps if you'd like to contribute back via the git repository. This is a great move for the project and makes it even easier for developers to contribute their fixes and ideas back to the development group!

Joshua Thijssen has also posted a guide to getting started on his blog.

Anthony Ferrara has started a new series of posts to his blog that will introduce you to the source behind the project - the code that makes PHP tick. In this first part of the series, he gives more of an overview of things like where you can find the source and some basic C concepts.

In this post, we'll walk through the basics of the PHP application: where to find it, the general structure of the codebase and a few really fundamental concepts about the C language. To be clear, the goal of the series is to get a reading comprehension of the source code. [...] Additionally, this series is going to be based off the 5.4 codebase. The concepts should be pretty much the same from version to version, but this way there's a defined version that we're working against (to make it easier to follow later, when new versions come out).

He includes the link to the PHP SVN repository to grab the latest source, talks some about the general structure of the codebase and basic C information in case you're not versed in the language (like variables and pre-processor instructions).

On the PEAR Group blog there's a new post welcoming all new contributors to the project and pointing out that the PEAR account on Github has officially passed the 200 repository mark in the move from SVN to Git.

PEAR is about providing the PHP community with reusable, effective components - this has been our mission since day 1. If there is anything we can do to make that goal happen, to assist you as an individual or company, I would strongly encourage you to let us know - we’re here to help.

They mention the work of two individuals that have done good work on a specific package, meldra and Gemorroj - perfect examples of how the move to Github has made it simpler to implement changes that have been "waiting in the wings" on the XML_Feed_Parser and Image_Barcode2 packages.

If you've had changes you've wanted to make to a PEAR package in the past but haven't ever gotten them submitted, there's not a better time than now.

On the PEAR blog today it's been pointed out that many PEAR packages are moving to github as their standard place for development and repositories under the pear and pear2 accounts are available for anyone wanting to make the move.

While the existing PEAR packages will continue to use the pear.php.net distribution and bug tracking capabilities; it’s never been easier to contribute to a PEAR package – simply fork; add your changes and send us a pull request. If your preferred packages aren’t yet on github, please feel free to drop us a line on the pear-dev mailing list.

Here's more about the process to get the repository set up and how to migrate your package's current code from SVN over to github. The transition's pretty painless and can make the social development and improvement of your package a lot simpler.

Fabien Potencier has made an announcement on the Symfony Blog today about all the availability of previous Symfony versions on github.

symfony1 is well and alive and many developers are now using it for projects hosted on Git. But as the official symfony 1 repository is hosted on Subversion, it's not always easy to get things versioned easily. As of today, this becomes much more easier. If you are using Git and symfony1, you can now use the official symfony1 Git clone.

There are branches for each of the major 1.x releases as well as tags for some of the minor releases. You can, of course, still access the latest packages directly via the symfony website.

Recently the PHP project announced a move to git as the primary version control system for the language's development. In a new post to SitePoint's PHPMaster.com site, Davey Shafik explains what that means to the average developer and what you can expect of the future.

Just over two years since its move from the antiquated CVS to Subversion (SVN), PHP is once again on the move: this time, to Git. Well, eventually. The migration from CVS to SVN was a huge one and took many months. The need for the PHP project to support its user base, hook scripts (commit mailing list, etc.) means that any change of revision control software means quite a large commitment. This is why even though the voting is over, and the dust has settled, we won’t be seeing PHP on Git until the end of this year.

Davey shares his vote - pro-git - and explains what his choice (and many others') means for the language, including a modified patch acceptance policy and a convenience for developers to be able to work anywhere.

All in all, I feel migrating from Subversion to Git can only be a good thing for the PHP project and the community as a whole. [...] it is pretty clear that the PHP development community is in favor of the decision.

A little while back, the PHP development group posted a survey of developers asking them which version control system they'd like to see the PHP project use. By an overwhelming margin, git has won and things are already in motion to move parts of the project away from subversion.

In his mailing list post, David Soria Parra explains:

After 2 weeks of voting and discussion, I closed the votes today. The results are fairly straightforward. Most of the users want to move to a decentralized version control system. [...] I don't want to make a difference of who voted for what. I think the results are overwhelming in favor of Git.

He'll be working on the spec to make the move for the PHP source over to git and is planning a cut over some time in December. Stay tuned to the php.internals mailing list for more details about the move as they come up.

As Derick Rethans notes in his latest post, the Xdebug project is now on github and can be found under his account.

I've just opened my Xdebug repository on github. Importing my old SVN repository was a bit of a task. With the help of Ole Marius Smestad I managed to cook up a bash script to import and fix-up the repository. In the meanwhile I've learned more about git than I ever wanted to know, but still not enough.

Besides the source for Xdebug itself, you'll also notice repositories for the Xdebug website, the GtkDBGp client and the DBGp protocol definition.

On the "PHP and Me" blog there's a new entry from Pinpin Bysma showing how to use the PHP-based deployment tool Phing to update your production website via an FTP connection, automated by a Phing build.

If you're working on a PHP project, like with any other project, probably comes a time when you need to "build a new release," e.g. update the production web site with the latest version of the code. And doing the whole thing manually isn't the most efficient way to get things done, especially if you're lazy, or have to do that every once in a while, over a long period of time. [...] Obviously if updating the site itself could be done without FTP but through a simple svn switch, things would be easier. Still, Phing would allow to make things easier just as nicely. It could for example still be used to create the new tag, trigger the switch, etc

He introduces the process by showing a basic Phing build file that uses the PEAR VersionControl_SVN component to get the latest from the repository and push it to another directory. There was one thing that he wanted to do that the default SVN task couldn't - export the difference between two tags. To make this happen, he had to extend Phing and make a new task - SvnExportDiff. He includes the code for this new task and an updated build file to show it all in use - complete with the FtpDeploy to push the code live.