2020-04-03

PHP 8's Release Schedule is Available

Leia em Português

It is official! PHP 8 is scheduled for the first week of December 2020!

Derick Rethans, a core contributor to PHP language and elected release manager for version 7.4, recently opened for discussion the election who's gonna be PHP 8's release manager.

Alongside, a rough schedule got published. And even though it is not yet public, anyone can access it.

One of the most expected features is the Just in Time Compiler. If you'd like to know exactly how it works and which benefits it brings, I wrote this very detailed post about the JIT itself. Hope you find it useful :)

Release Schedule for PHP 8.0

The first schedule points to 3rd of December 2020, as the General Announcement date for PHP 8's release.

There are some very important dates before this, though.

Alpha Releases

The first alpha release should come out around mid June 2020. As usual, this is a great moment to find bugs, ask for changes and there's still a short window of time to get your commits in.

After the third alpha (mid July) a feature freeze is scheduled, this shall happen by the end of July. (27th of July)

Feature Freeze

By the moment the Feature Freeze comes (end of July 2020) no further language features can target PHP 8.0 anymore.

From that moment on you can already trust which features will be present. You can find them in this post I wrote about what will come with PHP 8.0.

PHP 8 Release Candidates

There are 6 Release Candidates scheduled for PHP 8.

The first release candidate, PHP 8.0-RC1, should be available short after first week of September.

All RC releases are scheduled on a bi-weekly basis, meaning each second week a new RC should come out.

The last Release Candidate, PHP 8.0-RC6, will become available around the 19th of November 2020.

This shall bring sufficient time for testing, bug finding (and fixing) and preparing for the release that comes with the first week of December 2020.

The link for this schedule is available on php.net's website and in the internet archive. Here's a snapshot from the moment I'm writing: Internet Archive: PHP 8.0's TODO List.

Cheers!