New Dev Weekly Summary

Hello All, If you have not been able to follow the list over the last week, I hope that this summary help you catch up! Note that the summary is quite high-level and leaves out a lot of the unresolved activity on the list, as well as skipping over threads that have a lot of conflict, but no real, errr..., value. (IMHO :) Also, before I send this off to Zend for posting on the site, does anyone have any corrections or additions (coughDerickcoughAndreicough) ? :) --- FIX: Bug Database Cleanup In celebration of the release of PHP 4.1.0, a group of people (including Yasuo Ohgaki, Sander Roobol, Markus Fisher, Derick Rethans, Jani Taskinen and other) have been working on clearing out the old bugs in the bug database. Nice work guys! FIX: mcrypt Extension Derick Rethans has corrected a series of bugs in PHP's mcrypt extension. The corrections should appear in the next release of PHP. The bugs corrected include bug 13399 and bug 14162. Visit http://bugs.php.et http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=13399 and http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=14162 for details. REQ: Documentation of Thread-Safe Functions Emanuel Dejanu has requested that the functions that are Thread-Safe (aka safe to use with threaded web-servers, like IIS and Apache (under Windows)be listed as so in the documentation. To keep an eye on how this request progresses, visit http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=14447 FIX: Long integer numbers in dBase Vlad Krupin fixed a problem that was causing the dbase_get_record() and dbase_get_record_with_names() functions to only retrieve the first 10 digits of integer fields. The functions can now retrieve all digits stored in integer fields. For more details, see http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=5993 NEW: Windows Binaries of 4.1.0 Released Official Windows binaries of PHP 4.1.0 have been released and are available on http://[your favorite mirror].php.net/downloads.php. Please do use a local mirror to download the new binaries! TLK: PostgreSQL Function Renamed Yasuo Ohgaki has renamed the functions in the Postgres extension so that they conform to the PHP function naming conventions. The old function names are still available and scripts using the old names should continue to work as expected. The changes to the function names should appear in the next release of PHP after 4.1.0 FIX: Improved Error Handling for Sybase and MSSQL Dave Brotherstone has submitted a patch that would handle "raiserror" type error thrown by the SQL server. The patch needs to be reviewed and tested. To see how the patch fares, visit http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=100807950600002&r=1&w=2 FIX: Better Spam Protection for the PHP Mailing Lists A new method of spam protection has been implemented for the PHP mailing lists. The spam protection works by only allowing messages from known email addresses to be posted to the list. Unknown users can easily become known users with a simple email-based registration process. The registration process is triggered by simply sending a message to a PHP mailing list. If you encounter problems posting to a PHP mailing list, you can contact the list administrators at php-list-admin@lists.php.net. TLK: Improved Error Reporting for PHP Yasuo Ohgaki has suggested that the PHP developers improve the consistency of how PHP reports errors, ensuring that similar types of problems return similar and appropriate error messages. To follow this discussion, visit http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=100814401800005&r=1&w=2 TLK: Improving the PHP Test Suite Sterling Hughes has suggested that the PHP test suite be expanded to include a set of simple servers like a web server and FTP server. The presence of these servers would allow the test suite to test features that the current testing framework cannot handle. To follow this discussion, go to http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=100827589300009&r=1&w=2 NEW: Experimental and Powerful Object-Oriented Functionality Andrei Zmievski has cooked up an extension called 'overload' that allows for powerful overloading and extension of objects. The extension allows developers to control how the object responds to method invocations and how the object handles the assignment and retrieval of properties. If you wish to test the overload extension, you will need to download a current snapshot of PHP - visit http://snaps.php.net/ The ext/overload directory in the PHP source tree contains a simple usage example. Additionally Stig Sather Bakken has used the extension to implement an autoloader - see the Autoloader.php file in the PEAR directory to check it out. -- Zak Greant PHP Quality Assurance Team http://qa.php.net/ "We must be the change we wish to see." - M. K. Ghandi