PHP 5.4.0 Released

Looks like PHP released version 5.4.0 yesterday which is a major leap forward in the 5.x series. The key features of PHP 5.4.0 include:

• New language syntax including Traits, shortened array syntax and more
• Improved performance and reduced memory consumption
• Support for multibyte languages now available in all builds of PHP at the flip of a runtime switch
• Built-in webserver in CLI mode to simplify development workflows and testing
• Cleaner code base thanks to the removal of multiple deprecated language features

and lots of other improvements and fixes. Some of the functions that were depreciated before are now removed such as:

Register Globals
Magic Quotes
Safe Mode

The default character set is now UTF-8 within the php.ini files.

http://php.net/releases/5_4_0.php

I think the main reason I am really excited for the stable release of PHP 5.4.0 is due to CPanel and and their support for the FastCGI Process Manager (FPM). They had encountered some issues with PHP 5.3 and were waiting for the fixes that the PHP team were going to have in version 5.4.x. I have a feeling CPanel will wait a little while for PHP 5.4.x to be out for awhile to fix some of the bugs, but I am really excited for this news.

With the FastCGI Process Manager (aka PHP-FPM), it is an alternative to the PHP FastCGI implementation which allows PHP processes to share pools of memory under different UIDs. The way Ozzu's servers are setup now is that a different user who spawns a PHP process cannot share that memory pool with another process by another user. So in a shared hosting environment with many users each user has to have their own pool of memory which ends up eating quite a bit of resources on the server. With PHP-FPM I would be able to setup the server so that different UIDs could share the same memory pools which will vastly decrease the amount of memory needed and should be a huge win for the server.

So for me the release of PHP 5.4.0 is exciting as I am really looking forward to CPanel fully supporting PHP-FPM.

Anybody else have any thoughts on the release of PHP 5.4.0?

I won't use it for anything production for at least 6 months just to make sure I'm not walking into a trap. I would imagine CPanel to be doing the same.

I'm glad they got rid of register globals and magic quotes though. Now people will stop trying to use them.

It's also about time it defaults to UTC is a default timezone isn't set. I always thought its behavior was a bit insane with that. It also looks like they've fixed a few bugs that I had issues with.

I'm not sure how I feel about them removing support for mysql 3.23. There are still lots of servers out there that use it. Then too, I guess if you're going to take the time to upgrade php on those, you may as well upgrade mysql while you're at it. I mean 3.23 has to be over decade old by now, but mission-critical systems don't see updates all that often when things are actually working right.

I'm also not sure how I feel about the very thing you applaud. I'd have to do some real digging to see what shared memory space might mean to security before giving an opinion on that.

I looked over the new array syntax and, tbh, I really don't see how there's any actual improvement there. As I see it, now you can write arrays in a much more sloppy manner and that's going to lead to headaches, I just know it.

I always use PHP version that included in Debian packages.

just sent a msg to my host on facebook asking if we are upgrading lol.

i hope this gives PHP a little more credit as a few people are not fans of the language.

Guess we will find out over the next week when everyone pulls it apart.