PHP 7
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| PHP 7 | |
|---|---|
| Name | PHP 7 |
| Author | Rasmus Lerdorf |
| Developer | The PHP Group |
| Released | 2015 |
| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| Platform | Web servers |
| Genre | Scripting language |
| License | PHP License |
PHP 7 is a major release of the widely used scripting language created by Rasmus Lerdorf and maintained by The PHP Group that focused on performance, reduced memory use, and language improvements. Announced after deliberation among contributors from projects such as Facebook and Zend Technologies, the release was driven by industry needs expressed at conferences including FOSDEM, PHPCon, and Black Hat USA. The change affected vendor stacks maintained by organizations like Apache Software Foundation, Nginx, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud Platform.
History and Development
Development began with design input from contributors at Facebook, Zend Technologies, and independent authors who participated in community forums such as GitHub and events like PHPCon. Discussions at International PHP Conference, FOSDEM, and OSC influenced priorities including performance improvements inspired by work at Facebook on the HipHop Virtual Machine and contributions from engineers associated with Symfony, Drupal, and Magento. The release cycle was managed through version control systems hosted on GitHub, with major decisions debated on mailing lists and tracked via issues created by authors affiliated with JetBrains, Perforce, and academic groups at MIT and Stanford University.
New Features and Improvements
The release integrated low-level changes originating from projects like Facebook's HipHop Virtual Machine research, with language-level contributions from members associated with Zend Technologies and Symfony. New constructs and operators were designed and reviewed at conferences such as php[world], Acquia Engage, and DrupalCon by speakers from Mozilla and Google. The standard library improvements were discussed in proposals submitted by developers from WordPress, Magento, and Composer maintainers. The core team included contributors who had authored extensions for MySQL, SQLite, PostgreSQL, and integrations used by vendors such as Oracle and IBM.
Performance and Benchmarks
Benchmarks presented at events like Black Hat USA and FOSDEM compared the release against earlier interpreters and virtual machines including the HipHop Virtual Machine and implementations used by Facebook and Google. Independent testing from companies like Stack Overflow, Wikipedia, Medium, Tumblr, and Slack illustrated improvements for web applications built with frameworks such as Laravel, Symfony, Zend Framework, and CakePHP. Cloud providers including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform published performance notes for deployments on Amazon EC2, Azure App Service, and Google Compute Engine instances. Benchmarks from research groups at MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, and University of California, Berkeley analyzed changes to memory allocation, opcode caches, and JIT proposals.
Compatibility and Migration
Migration guides were published by projects with large user bases such as WordPress, Drupal, Magento, and Joomla! to help administrators on stacks provided by cPanel, Plesk, Red Hat, and Debian packaging teams. Corporate users at Walmart Labs, Spotify, BBC, and The New York Times coordinated upgrades involving dependencies managed through Composer and CI pipelines hosted on Jenkins, Travis CI, and CircleCI. Compatibility testing included connectors for databases produced by MySQL AB, PostgreSQL Global Development Group, and SQLite Consortium, and adapters for APIs offered by companies like Stripe, PayPal, and Twilio.
Security Enhancements
Security hardening efforts were coordinated with disclosure channels involving experts from OWASP, CERT Coordination Center, and vendors such as Microsoft Security Response Center and Google Project Zero. Patches addressed class of vulnerabilities reported by maintainers at SANS Institute and auditors affiliated with NCC Group and Codenomicon. Enterprise users including Visa, Mastercard, Apple Inc., and Bank of America relied on improved behavior in extensions for OpenSSL and integration with TLS stacks maintained by IETF working groups. Security advisories were communicated through channels used by Red Hat Security and Debian Security Team.
Adoption and Ecosystem Impact
Adoption was driven by platform vendors such as Ubuntu, CentOS, and Fedora who packaged the release for system administrators using control panels by cPanel and Plesk. Major content management systems including WordPress, Drupal, and Magento updated compatibility statements while hosting companies like GoDaddy, Bluehost, and DigitalOcean announced support. The ecosystem of tools from Composer, Packagist, PHPUnit, Xdebug, Sentry, and New Relic adapted their integrations. Commercial vendors such as Zend Technologies, JetBrains, Perforce, and cloud providers including Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure updated SDKs and build images, influencing recruitment at firms like GitHub and Atlassian.