The long anticipated next generation of PHP is here!
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After eight months of intense development, the PHP group is -pleased to announce the release of PHP 4.0 Beta 1. This new, -downwards-compatible successor to the award winning PHP 3.0 Web scripting -language, features revolutionary enhancements that will allow PHP, more than -ever, to compete in the forefront of Web development tools.
-PHP 4.0 offers drastic improvements in every aspect - -performance and scalability, features, platform support and extendibility.
-The most significant change in PHP 4.0 is the integration of the -Zend engine. Zend, developed by Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans in the last -eight months, is a full rewrite of their PHP 3.0 scripting engine; The new -version is blazing fast, and offers significant performance boosts for both -simple and especially complex Web sites. In addition, the new scripting -engine enhances the PHP language with a bunch of new features, and removes -limitations that existed in version 3.0.
-In addition to Zend, PHP 4.0 introduces several other new -features. PHP 4.0 is truly platform independent, and is portable across -operating systems and different Web servers; Sascha Schumann added native -support for HTTP -sessions, without the need of a 3rd party library; And, Stig Bakken -implemented a -modular build process for UNIX, that would make it easy to use and distribute -dynamically loadable PHP modules.
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PHP 4.0 has been tested by a group of about 30 people for the -last three months. This small scale beta test was conducted to ensure that -the first public beta of PHP 4.0, when it is released, is stable enough to be -tested by the masses. We now feel that the code has reached a stability -level that is suitable for a public beta test, as most legacy PHP 3.0 scripts we -try to run on PHP 4.0 run without a glitch, and this very web site, the one -you're browsing now, is powered by PHP 4.0.
-However, it is still beta software. As such, we're -positive that there will be bugs in it. Since mostly all of PHP has been -either written from scratch or heavily modified, the chances of finding no bugs -in the new code are slim. For that reason, we don't recommend that you use -PHP 4.0 Beta 1 on production servers; If you choose to run PHP 4.0 Beta 1 -on a production server, at least make sure your web site runs properly under PHP -4.0 by first testing it offline, on a different Web server.
-Because we release the code as a beta, the default build -configuration builds PHP 4.0 in debug mode. Debug mode is considerably -slower than Release mode, but allows for more useful bug reports. If you -want to benchmark PHP 4.0 against PHP 3.0, make sure you turn debug mode off.
-PHP 4.0 is packed with many new features:
-The Zend Engine.
- In addition to unprecedented performance, the Zend engine features several
- important new language
- features, such as reference counting, enhanced objects support, a new
- boolean type and extendibility. (Andi Gutmans, Zeev Suraski).
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Server Abstraction Layer.
- PHP 4.0 has no server-specific code in any of its parts, and interfaces with
- Web server through a thin abstraction layer. This makes the process of
- adding support for different types of Web servers an easy task. Beta 1
- supports the Apache Web server and Microsoft's Internet Information
- Server. Later betas are expected to add support for additional Web
- servers. (Shane Caraveo, Andi Gutmans, Zeev Suraski).
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HTTP Sessions support.
- One of the features that was most requested for PHP 3.0 was built-in HTTP
- sessions. While HTTP session support has been available for a long
- time through PHPlib, we decided it was time to support them natively.
- (Sascha Schumann).
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Generalized Build Process, under UNIX.
- While Beta 1 doesn't exploit the power of the new generalized build process,
- future betas will allow you to easily build PHP modules dynamically. (Stig
- Bakken).
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Easier and more powerful configuration.
- All configuration directives available in php.ini (formerly
- php3.ini) can now be controlled at runtime, through Apache configuration
- files (Apache module only) or through the Windows registry (Win32
- only). (Zeev Suraski).
-
Zend has been designed from the ground up to be as compatible as -possible with the PHP 3.0 language. It is close to 100% compatibility with -PHP 3.0, except for very minor -incompatibilities that exist due to the nature of the new architecture.
-The PHP 4.0 Beta mailing list is php4beta@lists.php.net -(to subscribe, send an empty message to php4beta-subscribe@lists.php.net). -All PHP 4.0 related discussions should be held on this list; Please, don't -clutter the already over-flown PHP 3.0 mailing list with PHP 4.0 related -questions.
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PHP 4.0 bugs should be reported at http://bugs.php.net/. -Please, don't mix between http://bugs.php.net/bugs-php3.php -(the PHP 3.0 bug report tool) and http://bugs.php.net/.
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PHP 4.0's inner API has changed significantly since version -3.0. If you used only module API functions in your modules, your module -should work with PHP 4.0 without requiring any changes. However, if -you used inner API functions (for example, accessed symbol tables or arrays -using Hash functions), your module will require some porting.
-We haven't yet prepared updated API documentation. We hope -to prepare some for Beta 2.
-One of the goals of Beta 1 is to find out whether any function -modules in the source tree are incompatible with PHP 4.0. We hope to find -all of these modules and have them fixed for Beta 2.
-No date has been set for the final release of PHP 4.0. -Assuming the beta test of PHP 4.0 goes well, we expect the final release to be -out on the fourth quarter of 1999.
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