In a new post to his site long time PHP community member Ben Ramsey has officially announced PHP Testfest 2017, an event that gathers developers to write tests for the PHP language itself to help improve its quality and show them how to contribute back to the project.

For those who’ve been around the PHP community for a while, you’ll recall the successful PHP TestFest events that began after a discussion at PHP Quebec in 2008. Many user groups and mentors signed on to host and help with events, and a lot of folks became first-time contributors to the PHP project, helping improve our code coverage. It ran strong in a global sense from 2008 to 2010. After that, various groups (particularly the Brazilian groups) have continued the tradition.

A few months ago, at php[tek] in Atlanta, I mentioned to Michelangelo that I’d love to bring back PHP TestFest. Sammy had given an excellent talk on writing PHPT tests, and <a href="https://twitter.com/ellotheth/status/868583446498734084>Gemma tweeted a link to the old PHP TestFest wiki page. From there, things snowballed.

Ben the provides the details of the planned Testfest that will run for four months and can be worked on from anywhere, not just one single event. The plan is to have it run from September through December of 2017 and there's plenty of support to help out. Organizers can email for more help getting started. There's also a website, Google Group and IRC channel as well as tools and resources to help bring you up to speed on testing the PHP language with phpt tests.