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PHP Core Roundup #15

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Roundup

Welcome back to PHP Core Roundup series! This is post #15, where we highlight and celebrate the improvements made to PHP during the month past by the PHP development team, members of the PHP Foundation, and more.

The PHP Foundation is a collective of PHP contributors, veterans, and companies that collaborate to ensure the long-term sustainability of the PHP programming language. The foundation currently supports six contributors focused on PHP's maintenance, debt reduction, and feature development. These contributors work closely with others on coding, documentation, and discussions.

Started over a year ago, the PHP Core Roundup series offers a summary of the latest developments, discussions, and news about PHP Core, contributed by both PHP Foundation members and other participants. This post is the thirteenth in the PHP Core Roundup series.

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PHP 8.3 Feature-Freeze

On July 18, PHP 8.3 branch reached its feature-freeze. As the name suggests, the list of features we plan to ship with PHP 8.3 is now frozen. Contributors who wish to make substantial changes to PHP should now target the next PHP version, PHP 8.4.

In the coming weeks, the PHP Foundation members, the PHP development team, and contributors will be making improvements to get PHP 8.3 ready for production release.

Release managers elected for PHP 8.3, Pierrick Charron, Jakub Zelenka, and Eric Mann will have the final say in case a major change must be made to the PHP 8.3.

PHP 8.3 Beta Release

The second beta release of PHP 8.3 was released this week. Now would be an ideal time to test your PHP applications on PHP 8.3.

Compiled Windows binaries are available at windows.php.net/qa, Docker images are available at Docker Hub, and source code at php/php-src repository on GitHub to compile yourself. On Homebrew, PHP 8.3.0-dev packages are available from shivammathur/php tap.

CI/CD platforms that use Docker images can use the PHP 8.2 docker images available with various base images. GitHub Actions can also make use of shivammathur/setup-php action, which supports PHP 8.3 builds.

PHP Bug Fix Releases

The PHP development team released two new versions in July 2023:

PHP 8.2.8 and PHP 8.1.21

These releases include bug fixes across various components such as CLI, Core, Curl, DOM, Opcache, OpenSSL, PGSQL, Phar, SPL, and Standard.

Recent RFCs and Mailing List Discussions

Changes and improvements to PHP are discussed, reported, and voted on by the PHP Foundation Team, the PHP development team, and contributors. Bug reports are made to the PHP issue tracker, changes are discussed in mailing lists, minor code changes are proposed as pull requests, and major changes are discussed in detail and voted on as PHP RFCs. Documentation and the php.net website changes are also discussed and improved at their relevant Git repositories on GitHub.


Hundreds of awesome PHP contributors put their efforts into improvements to the PHP code base, documentation, and the php.net website. Here is a summary of some changes made by the people behind PHP. Things marked with 💜 are done by the PHP Foundation team.

RFC Updates

Accepted: PDO driver specific sub-classes by Danack

PHP's PDO extension supports connecting to multiple database software by using different database drivers available. Some of these drivers include MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite. Although most of these database support a common set of features, all of these databases have evolved to provide additional features that PDO sometimes can support, but there is no easy way for a library to check for these capabilities without having to inspect the driver and their versions.

This RFC proposes to create driver-specific sub classes of \PDO, so libraries and applications can easily indicate the database driver they expect, and make use of IDE autocompletion and proper error handling.

The vote was unanimously accepted, and is pending implementation.

Accepted: Deprecate Functions with Overloaded Signatures by Máté Kocsis 💜

This RFC proposes to deprecate a number of functions that have overloaded signatures, meaning they behave differently based on the number or type of arguments passed to them. The goal is to make PHP's function signatures more consistent and predictable.

Implemented: Deprecations for PHP 8.3 by Gina Peter Banyard 💜, Christoph M. Becker, Máté Kocsis 💜, Tim Düsterhus, Go Kudo, Andreas Heigl

The aim is to clean up some of the older, less consistent parts of PHP to make the language more reliable and predictable. The following list provides a short overview of the functionality targeted for deprecation:

  • Passing negative $widths to mb_strimwidth()
  • The NumberFormatter::TYPE_CURRENCY constant
  • MT_RAND_PHP
  • Calling ldap_connect with 2 parameters

Implemented: Marking Overridden Methods by Tim Düsterhus

PHP 8.3 will have a new attribute #[\Override]. If this attribute is added to a method, the engine will validate that a method with the same name exists in a parent class or any of the implemented interfaces. If no such method exists, a compile time error will be emitted.

The similar concepts exist in Java, TypeScript, C++, C#, Swift, Kotlin, and other languages.

Implemented: Path to Saner Increment/Decrement operators by Gina Peter Banyard 💜

This RFC proposed several improvements to normalize the behavior of $v++ and $v-- to be the same as $v += 1 and $v -= 1, which PHP is currently inconsistent on.

It deprecates certain patterns, and introduces two new functions named str_increment and str_decrement to provide the deprecated behavior in a conscious way.


Merged PRs and Commits

Following are some changes that did not go through an RFC process because they are either planned, bug fixes, or progressive enhancements.

Full list of commits since PHP Core Roundup #14

Commits are in the order they were added, grouped by author in alphabetical order.

Click here to expand

Adam Saponara

  • Fix GH-9669: phpdbg -h options doesn't list the -z option in GH-9713

Anatol Belski

Andreas Heigl

  • Deprecate ldap_connect with two parameters in GH-5177

Arnaud Le Blanc 💜

  • Add stack limit check in zend_eval_const_expr() in GH-11424
  • Expose time spent collecting cycles in gc_status() in GH-11523
  • Remove WeakMap entries whose key is only reachable through the entry value in GH-10932
  • Add AMPHP, ReactPHP, Revolt PHP to community job in GH-10933

Athos Ribeiro

Bob Weinand

  • Fix GH-11548 (Argument corruption when calling XMLReader::open or XMLReader::XML non-statically with observer active) in cad47be8b6

BohwaZ

  • [RFC] Transition SQLite3 to exceptions in GH-11058

Cristian Rodríguez

  • proc_open: Use posix_spawn(3) interface on systems where it is profitable in GH-7933

David CARLIER

  • ext/intl: intl_CharFromString using zend_string_truncate to adjust th… in GH-11575
  • zend stack: prepare zend_call_stack_get implementation for OpenBSD. in GH-11578
  • zend call stack fix freebsd code path. in GH-11766
  • zend vm savee registers support for riscv 64. in GH-11773

David Carlier

  • zend call stack, follow-up on 75e9980 in 343b599747
  • zend_gdb disable gdb detection for FreeBSD < 11 in 69b4360e88

Derick Rethans 💜

  • Import timelib 2022.08 in c02ac26685
  • Fix bug GH-11600: Can't parse time strings which include (narrow) non-breaking space characters in a4bdaeabf6
  • CS in b669cb4c1b
  • Make the new DatePeriod::createFromISO8601String method emit DateTimeImmutable objects in 82ff4c5e84

Dmitry Stogov

  • Fixed incorrect QM_ASSIGN elimination in 9fc0eab4b4
  • Fixed incorrect QM_ASSIGN elimination in b5f8a7270a

Eno

  • Improve openssl ext to generate EC keys with custom EC parameters in GH-9991

Filip Zrůst

  • Improve DTrace probe generation /w non-default compiler in GH-11643

Gabriel Fontes

Gina Peter Banyard 💜

  • Use binary safe case compare in new zend_string API in eb5cc1372c
  • Revert "Use binary safe case compare in new zend_string API" in a342138e17
  • Add tests for uncastable streams and dataloss streams in GH-10173
  • Remove assert.bail INI setting usage in DOMDocument tests in d510b5ae3e
  • ext/posix: posix_isatty() fix use-of-uninitialized-value in GH-11676
  • ext/intl: Fix memory leak in MessageFormatter::format() in GH-11658
  • RFC: Deprecate remains of string evaluated code assertions in GH-11671
  • Deprecate passing a negative width to mb_strimwidth() in af3c220abb
  • Add support for deprecating class constants in 3e2dbbf9c2
  • Deprecate NumberFormater::TYPE_CURRENCY constant in d65251e6e8
  • [RFC] Path to Saner Increment/Decrement operators in GH-10358
  • libxml_get_external_entity_loader(): test for incompatible resource being loaded in GH-11728
  • Refactor BCMath bundledlib and extension in GH-10774
  • ext/mysqli: Remove custom sys_get_temp_dir() function in 17a80eb08b
  • ext/mysqli: Remove conditional function declaration in 0c21715935
  • ext/mysqli: Stop using global variable in connection test helper in 8582d97b8c
  • ext/mysqli: Remove catchable fatal error handler in b389846d05

Ilija Tovilo 💜

  • Fix ext/zip arginfo.h in 73cf12d6ac
  • Fix mis-compilation of by-reference nullsafe operator in GH-11540
  • Fix missing "Optional parameter before required" deprecation on union null type in GH-11497
  • Fix serialization of RC1 objects appearing in object graph twice in GH-11349
  • xfail socket zerocopy test on Cirrus + arm in GH-11553
  • Attempt to fix gh11498.phpt on MSAN in 07dd0c80a8
  • Revert "Fix GH-9967 Add support for generating custom function, class const, and property attributes in stubs" in ef4f08832c
  • Revert "Merge branch 'PHP-8.2'" in 7b355e8d34
  • Use waitpid(-1) over WAIT_ANY in GH-11588
  • Revert "Revert "Remove name field from the zend_constant struct (#10954)"" in ad1b70d67e
  • Revert "Fix test after reverted commit" in 188072a58f
  • Attempt to improve setup-slapd.sh stability in GH-11590
  • Retire AppVeyor in GH-11566
  • Fix trailing if element JMP lineno in GH-11598
  • Fix use-of-uninitialized-value with ??= on assert in GH-11581
  • Implement flaky test section in GH-11325
  • Fix incorrect handling of unwind and graceful exit exceptions in GH-11608
  • Skip xleak tests on asan in GH-11610
  • Refine skipif for cirrus+arm in GH-11612
  • Fix double-compilation of arrow-function in GH-11632
  • Fix bug-gh11600.phpt in 57229836d4
  • Always memoize assert in GH-11686
  • Fix missing iface class const inheritance type check in 7343ae5d3c
  • Fix iface const visibility variance check in d9db446065
  • Fix use-of-uninitialized-value when calling php_posix_stream_get_fd in GH-11694
  • Fix gc_status type info in GH-11722
  • Revert "Remove name field from the zend_constant struct (#10954)" in GH-11604
  • Fix clang warning in GH-11729
  • Use :- as ini interpolation fallback separator in a48b977d3f
  • Always memoize calls in lhs of coalesce assignment in GH-11592
  • Resolve open_basedir paths on ini update in GH-10987
  • Fix hash_pbkdf2 options parameter in GH-11731
  • Fix use-after-free when unregistering user stream wrapper from itself in GH-11737
  • Fix leaking definitions on FFI::cdef()->new() in GH-11751
  • Fix merge conflict in ac99f7306c
  • Fix open_basedir leak in GH-11780
  • Call cast_object handler from get_properties_for in GH-11583
  • Replace xfail with skipif in calendar_clear_variation1.phpt in GH-11801
  • Fix uaf of MBSTRG(all_encodings_list) in GH-11822
  • Fix uouv in array_column in 2053af6628
  • Fix uouv in password_needs_rehash() and password_hash() in a145b40fa6
  • Fix various uouv in intl in 322da7bcc3
  • Fix some uouv in ext/pgsql in 82aa4253f1

Jakub Zelenka 💜

Jorg Adam Sowa

  • Extend tests of bcmath extension in GH-11563
  • Reorder list construction in the function php_intpow10 in GH-11683
  • Fix GH-11761: Bcmath numbers with trailing zeros in GH-11798

Joshua Behrens

  • Warn when fpm socket was not registered on the expected path in GH-11066

Juliette

  • GH Actions: auto-skip CI on PRs containing only docs changes in GH-11839

Kévin Dunglas

  • tests(ext-curl): fix HTTP/2 Server Push tests in GH-10669

Marc Bennewitz

  • number_format() Support rounding negative places in GH-11487
  • Prevent decimal int precision loss in number_format() in GH-11584
  • Prevent int overflow on $decimals in number_format in GH-11714

Michael Orlitzky

  • Fix most external GD 2.3.3 compatibility in GH-11257
  • ext/session/tests: more lenient expected output checks. in GH-11631
  • ext/imap/tests/mutf7.phpt: update for missing utf8_to_mutf7() in GH-11654
  • ext/sockets/tests/mcast_ipv6_*.phpt: suppress no-ipv6 warning in GH-11651
  • Skip oci8 tests when no database is available in GH-11820

Mikhail Galanin

  • Check if restart is pending before trying to lock SHM in GH-11805

Máté Kocsis 💜

  • Add support for typed class constants in stubs in 3906bccc00
  • Fix GH-9967 Add support for generating custom function, class const, and property attributes in stubs in d7ab0ff0c8
  • Revert "Remove name field from the zend_constant struct (#10954)" in 9f4bd3040d
  • Add support for extending multiple interfaces in the manual in 3c6590a391
  • Display the readonly modifier for readonly classes in 4db4f0ba00
  • Fix test after reverted commit in 0ce4f91d73
  • Declare type for ext/ffi internal class constants in 6988973bc6
  • Implement DatePeriod::createFromISO8601String() in 9c7c0a0b93
  • Deprecate calling dba_fetch() with $dba at the 3rd parameter in 134441efa9
  • Deprecate calling FFI::cast(), FFI::new(), and FFI::type() statically in 4acf0084dc
  • Deprecate calling get_class() and get_parent_class() without arguments in 1126232053
  • Add IntlCalendar::setDate() and IntlCalendar::setDateTime() in f236eb83b4
  • Implement IntlGregorianCalendar::createFromDate() and IntlGregorianCalendar::createFromDateTime() in 1486f52a12
  • Implement ldap_connect_wallet() in 72aada3c7c
  • Implement ldap_exop_sync in b3bd55f244
  • Make the $row param of pg_fetch_result(), pg_field_prtlen() and pg_field_is_null() nullable in 7ae0273ba3
  • Deprecate Phar::setStub(resource $stub, int $length) in 840d665583
  • Implement ReflectionMethod::createFromMethodName() in f41220fe5d
  • Deprecate ReflectionProperty::setValue() with an incorrect 1st arg type in d9a7f6741e
  • Implement stream_context_set_options() in a5ad7e09d5
  • Declare type for ext/snmp internal class constants in 1dcac9619c
  • Add UPGRADING note about SNMP class constant type declarations in 0f64b01aee
  • Fix misleading pass by reference error message in GH-10639
  • Use new class synopsis generating markup in GH-11809

Niels Dossche

  • Fix GH-11567: mb_str_pad causes access violation in 78d98e50c4
  • Fix GH-11300: license issue: restricted unicode license headers in GH-11572
  • Remove always-false check in 45c93c173c
  • Add negative test for isElementContentWhitespace() in 2aebca899c
  • Add edge-case testcase for offset in DOMNamedNodeMap in bccd924e3f
  • Add tests for DOMProcessingInstruction class in f62757e74a
  • Fix GH-9628: Implicitly removing nodes from \DOMDocument breaks existing references in GH-11576
  • Cleanup macro usage in ext/dom and ext/libxml in 87e7b61d8f
  • Implement GH-10024: support linting multiple files at once using php -l in GH-10024
  • Fix replaced error handling in SQLite3Stmt::__construct in GH-11607
  • Fix GH-10562: Memory leak and invalid state with consecutive ftp_nb_fget in GH-11606
  • Remove unused is_recursive entry in 1fbbd2b250
  • Reserve less file space if possible in a directory entry in 00c1e7bf0f
  • Cache d_type in directory entry in 0b2e6bc2b0
  • Fix crash when an invalid callback function is passed to CURLMOPT_PUSHFUNCTION in GH-11639
  • Fix return value of _php_server_push_callback in case of failure in dc9adda653
  • Add missing check on EVP_VerifyUpdate() in phar util in GH-11640
  • Avoid copying the stat buffer on a cache hit in GH-11628
  • Update type inference for ZEND_GET_CLASS and ZEND_GET_CALLED_CLASS in 838d80e7ee
  • Update type inference for ZEND_STRLEN in 3d944a367e
  • Fix GH-11625: DOMElement::replaceWith() doesn't replace node with DOMDocumentFragment but just deletes node or causes wrapping <></> depending on libxml2 version in GH-11627
  • Fix GH-11629: bug77020.phpt tries to send mail in GH-11636
  • Fix GH-11630: proc_nice_basic.phpt only works at certain nice levels in GH-11635
  • Remove always-true condition from php_dom_iterator_move_forward() in a2fde39169
  • Remove always-true condition from xml_utf8_decode() in 6d3433e60f
  • Cleanup php_libxml_node_decrement_resource() in 75229cb127
  • Fix tests for stat rdev in 6b87e08b82
  • Fix GH-10914: OPCache with Enum and Callback functions results in segmentation fault in GH-11675
  • Add regression test for GH-11682 in 48b246e038
  • Fix bug-gh11600.phpt to work with different ICU versions in 9c47f33a5f
  • Implement DOMNode::contains() in ea794e9cde
  • Avoid string allocation in dom_get_dom1_attribute() for as long as possible in 9880c336be
  • Avoid allocations in DOMElement::getAttribute() in f04e5059bb
  • Handle fragments consisting out of multiple children without a single root correctly in GH-11698
  • Refactor dom_node_node_name_read() to avoid double allocation in b3899eb569
  • Implement DOMElement::getAttributeNames() in 10d7e8dc3a
  • Implement DOMNode::getRootNode() in GH-11693
  • Implement DOMElement::className in GH-11691
  • Implement DOMParentNode::replaceChildren() in 6560c9bf8e
  • Fix ? in e8f0bdc7f1
  • Implement DOMElement::id in GH-11701
  • Prevent potential deadlock if accelerated globals cannot be allocated in GH-11718
  • Implement DOMNode::isConnected and DOMNameSpaceNode::isConnected in GH-11677
  • Implement DOMNode::parentElement and DOMNameSpaceNode::parentElement in GH-11679
  • Fix build on Windows in c97507b5c1
  • Implement DOMNode::isEqualNode() in GH-11690
  • Implement DOMElement::insertAdjacent{Element,Text} in GH-11700
  • Split off some methods so they can be reused in different places in 5b5a3d79da
  • Implement DOMElement::toggleAttribute() in GH-11696
  • Add new curl constants from curl until (including) 7.87 in GH-10459
  • Get rid of some unnecessary string conversion in GH-11733
  • Fix GH-11715: opcache.interned_strings_buffer either has no effect or opcache_get_status() / phpinfo() is wrong in GH-11717
  • Fix GH-11716: cli server crashes on SIGINT when compiled with ZEND_RC_DEBUG=1 in GH-11757
  • Use xmlSetNsProp when possible to prevent parsing the name in c8964b9a08
  • Remove useless readonly checks in dbe897b73e
  • Simplify configuration getters in GH-11778
  • Fix DOMEntity field getter bugs in GH-11779
  • Fix incorrect attribute existence check in DOMElement::setAttributeNodeNS() in GH-11776
  • Fix DOMCharacterData::replaceWith() with itself in GH-11770
  • Fix empty argument cases for DOMParentNode methods in GH-11768
  • Fix GH-11791: Wrong default value of DOMDocument::xmlStandalone in GH-11793
  • Fix GH-11792: LIBXML_NOXMLDECL is not implemented or broken in GH-11794
  • Fix DOM test in bed0e54104
  • Corrections to return type of loading DOM documents in ae66a0d142
  • XLEAK XML_SAVE_NO_DECL test for old libxml2 versions in 655f116be5

Peter Kokot

  • Fix GH-11603: Set LDFLAGS in GH-11605
  • Fix GH-9483: Autoconf warnings for newer Autoconf versions in 41a3573fcc
  • Update config.guess to 2023-06-23 and config.sub to 2023-06-26 in GH-11711
  • Fix Autoconf check for development versions in GH-11532
  • Remove unused PHP_HASH variable in GH-11653
  • Remove check for time.h and HAVE_TIME_H in GH-11726
  • Remove unused ZEND_STACK_GROWS_DOWNWARDS constant in GH-11762
  • Move --enable/--disable-fiber-asm help output in GH-11827

Remi Collet

  • The ZipArchive::FL_RECOMPRESS constant is deprecated in d8dd72fc31
  • zip extension version 1.22.1 in b406f7c67a
  • cast _private to avoid [-fpermissive] error in fde4386648
  • add ZipArchive::LENGTH_TO_END and ZipArchive::LENGTH_UNCHECKED constants in 0893b4bed5
  • use typed constants in 8.3 in ae3646db48

SakiTakamachi

  • Fix GH-11587 PDO::ATTR_STRINGIFY_FETCHES should return strings even in if PDO::ATTR_EMULATE_PREPARES is enabled in GH-11622

Tim Düsterhus

  • RFC: Add #[Override] attribute in GH-9836
  • Deprecate MT_RAND_PHP in GH-11560

Yurun

  • Fix incorrect function/method names in DBG_ENTER() in GH-11554

eater

  • ext/gettext: resolve underqouting that breaks with autoconf 2.72 in GH-11427

tekimen

  • Fix warning crc32.c on function declaration without a prototype. in GH-11742
  • Fix GH-11785: '++nothing+crc' is not a recognized feature for M1 / M2 macOS compile target in GH-11796


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