Yesterday we finally released RC2. It took much much longer than I had hoped. Several reasons played a factor here. For one it seems like people needed a bit of a breather after RC1 to work on other stuff. More importantly we found two large problem areas, one of which is hopefully fixed, the other one patched with a hack for now. But given the large amounts of other fixes and the fact that TestFest is running in full steam with several European User Groups set to meet tomorrow, it was high time we put RC2 out there. I am really happy that TestFest is continuing this year. More importantly when Zoe took over the leadership she made sure that we learned from last years mistakes. Things seem to be running much smoother in her hands than they did last year in mine. All the User Groups have also given their input and so its clear that this years TestFest will be bigger and more productive than last years by far! Obviously the commitment from each of the User Groups is vital to the over success.

So while unfortunately we already know that an RC3 will be necessary, we might even see a few TestFest submissions make it into the final release of PHP 5.3.0. However I hope that this time we actually manage to stick with the 2-3 week interval for next RC. So hopefully there will not be that much time before we go stable, but there is of course always PHP 5.3.1, PHP 6 etc. Then again, I cannot look into the personal agenda of all key people or anticipate if work will get the best of them. So keep those tests coming, the code coverage site will love you for it!