PHP.net has posted a wrapup of this year's TestFest and the great progress that was made to bring the language development up to the next level.

Overall 158 tests have been submitted as part of TestFest 2008 since the launch of the TestFest submission site by 30 different people from people all over the world. Actually this is not counting the various submissions by existing core developers, who also took this opportunity to add some more tests. This has actually increased total test coverage by about 10%.

It also mentions Felix De Vliegher who, because of his large volume of tests (and quality of them), was granted commit rights into the PHP repository to add his in himself. The list of elePHPant winners is included as well. You can also still submit tests through the TestFest submission site (just not for any of the rewards).

For those that weren't able to make it, Sebastian Bergmann has posted a short summary of what went on at the Dutch PHP usergroup's TestFest 2008 event.

I arrived shortly after noon, just in time for the start of the test fest at 12:30. After a short introduction to PHPT, we started writing tests for the Reflection API. We managed to write 37 tests with 10 people in 4 hours.

You can find out more about the user group on their website including meeting times, locations and links to other great PHP resources.

On his blog today, Pierre-Alain Joye has posted about a TestFest call being made in the Munich area for participants wanting to help improve the PHP language.

Yet another PHP TestFest call, this time for the Munich area (and even for all Southern Germany). Johannes and I are trying to organize one or more TestFest days. No PHP internal knowledge is required (like C knowledges), all you need is willing to help to improve PHP and a good mood

You can find out more information on what the TestFest is on its page on the qa.php.net website and, if you're not in the southern Germany area and still want to participate, check out the list of other events organized all around the world - there might be one near you.

Now that we're in to May, there's only one thing on a PHPer's mind (well some of them out there) - testing! This month several groups all around the world have set times for their own TestFests to dedicated time to writing up tests for PHP.

The TestFest is an event that aims at improving the code coverage of the test suite for the PHP language itself. As part of this event, local User Groups (UG) are invited to join the TestFest. [...] All it takes is someone to organize a UG to spearhead the event and to get others involved in writing phpt tests.

Several groups have set up their times (here's the list) including teh Atlanta PHP group's happening today and the Cologne/Bonn user group's happening tomorrow. If you want to get in on the action and haven't found a group, check out the list and see if there's one nearby and join up before the event starts!

Sebastian Bergmann has posted a checklist as a reminder of things to bring with you to your local event.

As was mentioned on the Zend Developer Zone, a Dutch PHP TestFest has been announced by Stefan Koopmanschap in a recent blog entry:

(from the ZDZ translation):

We are very proud that testing guru Sebastian Bergmann will be present at the meeting! Sebastian is the man behind Unit the test framework PHPUnit, and is seen as the authority in the field of tests and quality control in the PHP community.

The event will be happening on May 10th starting at about noon and going until around 4:30 in the afternoon. You can get more details from Stefan's blog entry including a link to register for the event.

On his blog, Johannes Schluter has posted about the participation that the Munich area will have in the upcoming TestFest:

The PHP TestFest was mentioned on Planet PHP multiple times before, so let's make it one more: Pierre and me are currently working on organizing a TestFest event at Munich. So we are looking for feedback from folks somewhere in the Munich area (or even all of southern Germany) so we know how many people to expect and then set a date.

You can get the latest about the TestFest from its page on PHP's QA site and the wiki page for all of the details (including groups that might be in your area participating).

The mentor list for this year's TestFest 2008 has been started (as mentioned by Ligaya Turmelle on her blog). The list so far includes people from the community like:

• Elizabeth Smith (near Chicago)
• Pierre Joye (Munich)
• Sebastian Bergmann (Cologne)
• David Coallier (Ireland & various others)

Local organizers are still being assigned. Those considered must already committers at PHP.net and will be available to answer questions for their given areas. Ultimately, they will do the final commits of the resulting tests.

On the PHP.net website, the official announcement for TestFest 2008 has been posted:

The PHP-QA team would like to announce the TestFest for the month of May 2008. The TestFest is an event that aims at improving the code coverage of the test suite for the PHP language itself. As part of this event, local User Groups (UG) are invited to join the TestFest. These UGs can meet physically or come together virtually. The point however is that people network to learn together.

The event is not only a teamwork/friendship building effort but will also help out the PHP.net mentors in a serious way - testing has largely been their responsibility and having a wealth of user-submitted tests to help out cuts their workload dramatically.

You can find out how to get you and your local PHP user group involved, head over to the TestFest homepage.