On 04.10.2022 at 22:42, David Rodrigues wrote:

> I wanted to suggest the possibility of introducing experimental features to
> PHP.
>
> This is an old thread I guess, but I think it's good to reevaluate the
> situation from time to time, as other languages already do this to some
> extent and PHP doesn't. Some platforms/languages (Node, Kotlin) and
> libraries (React) bring features natively in an experimental way.
>
> I wanted to propose that we bring this idea into PHP, so we wouldn't have
> to wait for new major/minor versions (eg. 9.0 or 8.2, 8.3) to try out these
> new features, and so when these versions arrive, they'll already be quite
> polished, avoiding patches sometime later due to wider usage of users.

Do the other platforms introduce experimental features in revisions?  I
doubt that, and I'm pretty sure that is (at least currently) no option
for PHP.  We have several months of bi-weekly pre-releases for new
minor/major versions, and are barely able to stabilize new features; not
only wrt. to the feature itself, but also wrt. unforeseen side effects.

The current release cycle[1] still mostly makes sense to me, and that
says for revisions:

* Bugfixes only (with a room for exceptions on a case by case basis and
only for small self contained features additions)

I wouldn't want to sacrifice stability in favor of shipping new features
every month – including having more discussions about which feature may
be introduced in a revision.

[1] <https://wiki.php.net/rfc/releaseprocess#releases_cycle>

--
Christoph M. Becker

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