PHP 5.3.0RC2 has been released, which means that the next version of PHP is just around the corner. It comes right in the middle of the annual PHP Testfest. I rambled on a bit on the Freenode podcast a couple of weeks ago about this - it’s an annual project where PHP usergroups and individuals around the world get together to improve the unit testing of PHP. This has benefits for everyone involved - PHP is improved, and more likely to maintain backward compatibility, and the people involved in writing the tests get to contribute in a meaningful way to the project, and hopefully learn something on the way. Several usergroups have events scheduled, and a couple have already taken place to great success. If you’re a serious PHP user, and interested in getting involved, it’s well worth checking out.

Even just grabbing the latest PHP release, compiling it on your platform, and running “make test” helps the project. It doesn’t take much to do, and you can run it in the background while doing something else. Go for it!