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Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:59:51 +0200
Cc: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Johannes_Schl=FCter?= <johannes@php.net>
Subject: tentative 5.3 release plan
From: mls@pooteeweet.org (Lukas Kahwe Smith)

Hello all,

Over the last week we have collected todo/wishlist items for PHP 5.3  
[1]. We have tried to get in contact with all the known stakeholders  
and we have we have gotten enough information from you all that our  
release plan will be more than tentative, but you never know and  
common sense always rules over plans.

Again the focus areas we see for the coming weeks related to 5.3 are:
- namespaces
- late static binding
- re2c
- windows support
- minimizing BC support/documentation

Additionally we see the following items as very important:
- intl extension
- phar extension
- E_DEPRECATED
- __callStatic
- Garbage Collection
- MySQLnd

In our dreams someone would also make PDO a focus area, since the  
number of open bugs is getting ridiculous. This is also a call to the  
general community to try and help to find a PDO maintainer. In the  
mean time people not adapt in C might at least try and plow through  
the bug tickets to find duplicates and verify the open tickets, write  
tests etc.

This already lengthy list is no where a complete listing of all the  
open items people are hoping to get in. At this point we are calling  
for a feature freeze [2] by Thursday July the 24th (I will spare you  
all a specification of a specific timezone, again common sense rules).  
A week after we plan to release alpha1 (July 31st). From then on we  
will try to make alpha, beta and eventually RC's in 2-3 week intervals.

Note that we moved closures into 5.3. We thought long and hard about  
this one. This is not the opening of the flood gates of engine feature  
additions. The reason why we added it was that we had pretty much  
universal letters of support for this patch, that it seems fairly  
nonintrusive and that the debates over the feature seem to have  
resulted in general agreement on the syntax. More over with a well  
documented RFC we feel the chances are fairly good that we will not  
have any big nasty surprises. That being said, the second we start  
seeing that closures have issues that take away from resources from  
the above noted items, we will most likely pull the patch from 5.3.

We are hoping to have a stable release of PHP 5.3 out by between mid  
September and mid October.

regards,
Lukas Kahwe Smith
mls@pooteeweet.org

[1] http://wiki.php.net/todo/php53

[2] We will consider exceptions on a case by case basis until alpha2.  
Though there is little chance we will allow engine feature additions.  
So for the most part we will allow only fairly self contained changes  
within specific extensions. Let us know ASAP if you still have  
something in the pipeline (this includes any item on the todo list),  
that you feel you cannot complete until the 24th.