Wrote some words on the occasion of PHP7 's release

Open source also has 4, 5 years of time, from the initial yaf, to today's PHP7, I participate in more and more projects, the use of my Code more and more users, tomorrow will release the PHP7, is definitely my open source since the most important milestone, I should commemorate today, let me a little sensibility once.

PHP7 project began in the Spring Festival last year, at that time our PHP-5.5 based on the Opcache JIT project is basically because we can not get the desired results, some of the information gathered in the JIT to let us realize that the basic part is not good enough, and can not well support the JIT, So in February 2014 or so, we started the refactoring project, and the hope was that by refactoring, you could get more than 30% of the sex boost and provide a foundation for future optimization.

There was no name for the project at the time, we just tried it, those were the busiest times for me, because only the two of us were in the project and I was also busy with my microblog work, so basically the night time was on top. But luckily, I have a 5-hour jet lag with another person, so a lot of work can be done serially.

As the project progresses, we are pleasantly surprised to find that the performance improvement is larger than we thought, by April, another person joined in, by May basically has finished most of the work, so we published this one result, named as the PHP ng project.

But what I didn't expect was that we met a lot of resistance in the community, because when we secretly developed PHP Ng, the community was in parallel with a 64-bit project sponsored by a major Microsoft student, when we openly PHP Ng, they questioned, suddenly with such a large patch out, No one else knows, how to maintain, how to merge with 64-bit supported branches, and so on, and then against adopting the PHP NG branch. At that time I was very frustrated, and lasted a long time I was very tired of the quarrel, and finally because I really can not, cavity anger, regardless of their broken English, in the mail group back to a slot mail, appeal to you to cherish this branch of performance promotion.

There is a very interesting episode, there are many supporters of PHP ng, they are also very depressed about such a quarrel, one day, some supporters on the PHP official website published such a news: Http://php.net/archive/2014.php#id2014-05-27-1 Where we write: "When we aren ' t looking for pictures of kittens on the Internet, internals developers are nearly always for Ways to improve PHP, a few developers have-a focus on performance. "But that day opponents said, no, PHP ng has not been accepted, asked to delete this article, but in consideration of the article has been sent out, Finally on the home page down the entrance of this article, but in the archive to retain the content. A lot of media have felt this time oolong.

After the dispute, we can only vote to decide whether to accept PHP ng, fortunately, the final vote, most people support the PHP NG project, and decided to PHP Ng as the basis for the beginning of our new version of PHP development. It was not decided to use the PHP6 or PHP7 version (which was later voted PHP7). I now often say this experience, let me feel the "democratic pain."

After the things we can see, in this nearly two years time, a variety of new features to join, the performance of continuous improvement, a lot of previously unreasonable local improvements, and so on, have joined the PHP7, so that PHP7 more and more plump. From the bottom of the zval to the scalar type hint, from the initial 30% performance improvement, to now more than 100% performance leap, each change is worth looking forward to. Then after a few reluctant jump tickets, finally, to this day, all this will be present in front of you.

Sometimes I think, I am lucky, luck has always had the opportunity to do what has not been done and have challenges, Luck has been able to feel the growth of their own, lucky in the most efforts to do, after all, saw the effect of the return. I also sincerely hope that my luck will inspire more people to participate in the open source.

In the future, we will continue to work to improve PHP performance, improve the quality of PHP, so that more phper, can continue to enjoy the promotion of transparency.

Finally, to do open source so long, brought me a lot of harvest, I would like to thank you, thank you for these encouragement, but also thank you for the kindness of the absurd praise.

PS: Originally wanted to wait until the release of PHP7, but think of it to the arrival of the momentum, the first release. PHP7 is now available to download, the official announced that considering the jet lag problem, the day after tomorrow to see it. Current download Address: Http://php.net/get/php-7.0.0.tar.gz/from/a/mirror enjoy!