I've packaged what looks the be the final RC for the 5.2.1 release, RC4. This release fixes another dozen or so bugs since the last release and from the given feedback looks to be regression free. That said I'd like to ask everyone to take a few minutes and try this RC with their code to make sure it really is as good as it seems and to ensure no new issues are introduced. If you come across any issue please let me know via http://bugs.php.net, this blog, or internals mailing list. The tarballs for this release can be found here: http://downloads.php.net/ilia/php-5.2.1RC4.tar.bz2 (md5sum: f50578276f653b1f523150e3ff987f03) http://downloads.php.net/ilia/php-5.2.1RC4.tar.gz (md5sum: 361197eb2b21b36e2e20cb132da2cf16)

Sometimes the things you'll find on a bookshelves of your local book store can be quite unusual and downright weird. Consider the following super-hero themed series of books on Windows products by O'Reilly.

The 3rd release candidate for PHP 5.2.1 is now available for download. The tarballs can be found here: http://downloads.php.net/ilia/php-5.2.1RC3.tar.bz2 (d3889eda8c3471ce7cf2adb35a4de736) http://downloads.php.net/ilia/php-5.2.1RC3.tar.gz (c5b3e5540d1951d4c4b976b8a39c09ab) and the Win32 binaries will be available in short order. Since the last release, there are over 20 different bug fixes resolving some annoying engine issues such as the tempval leak inside foreach(). We do not anticipate any regressions to be introduced by this RC, but I would still like to ask everyone to take a few minutes and test it against their code base. If you come across any issues please report them at http://bugs.php.net/. Depending on the stability of this release it may either be followed by a final release or another RC, therefor your feedback is critical to determining whether or not the code is stable enough to warrant the 5.2.1 final.

Thanks to Steph's hard work the last few months of weeklies are now available for reading. If you don't have the time or keep an eye on what's going on in the PHP community, especially on the developer mailing lists, weeklies are a quick shortcut to getting yourself up to date.

After a few month break since the last release, a new version of FUDforum is once again in the works. This is primarily a feature enhancement release with a slew of new functionality designed to improve the forum. Aside from the new feature a fair number of bug fixes is also available, so something for everyone ;-) As you can tell from the version, this is release candidate, so its not quite perfect yet, but I am hoping that within a month the release process can be wrapped up and stable be released. The install script can be found here and the upgrade script here. The release announcement detailing all of the major changes can be found here.