The PHP.net has announced the availability of the latest Release Candidate in the PHP 5.4.0 series - PHP 5.4.0 RC6:

The PHP development team announces the 6th release candidate of PHP 5.4. PHP 5.4 includes new language features and removes several legacy (deprecated) behaviours. Windows binaries can be downloaded from the Windows QA site. [...] The 6th release candidate focused on improving traits. Please test them carefully and help us to identify bugs in order to ensure that the release is solid and all things behave as expected.

You can download this latest release from the PHP QA site (Windows binaries) and test it on your local instance/applications. Any and all feedback about issues should be reported to either the QA mailing list or on the bug tracker. A complete list of updates is available in the NEWS file.

The PHP development group has officially announced the release of PHP 5.3.9, the latest in the 5.3.x series.

The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.3.9. This release focuses on improving the stability of the PHP 5.3.x branch with over 90 bug fixes, some of which are security related.

Bugfixes and updates in this release include the max_input_vars directive, an autoloading issue with is_a and changes to the FPM SAPI module. You can see the full list of changes here or just go over and download this latest release and get to installing - source, Windows binaries.

The PHP development team has officially released PHP 5.4.0 RC5, the latest (and the second to last) release candidate for the next major version of the language.

The PHP development team announces the 5th release candidate of PHP 5.4. PHP 5.4 includes new language features and removes several legacy (deprecated) behaviours. Windows binaries can be downloaded from the Windows QA site.

Bugs fixed in this version include a few to the Core, SAPI/CLI SAPI, PHP-FPM support and improvements to the session extension. Download and test out this latest version on your systems - the more feedback they receive the better! You can report issues you might find on the PHP bug tracker.

As mentioned on the main PHP.net site, the latest Release Candidate in the PHP 5.4.x series has been released - PHP 5.4.0RC3:

The PHP development team is proud to announce the third release candidate of PHP 5.4. PHP 5.4 includes new language features and removes several legacy (deprecated) behaviours. Windows binaries can be downloaded from the Windows QA site. THIS IS A RELEASE CANDIDATE - DO NOT USE IT IN PRODUCTION!. This is the third release candidate. The release candidate phase is intended as a period of bug fixing prior to the stable release. No new features should be included before the final version of PHP 5.4.0.

Major changes include the introduction of UTS #46 mapping support in the intl extension and the inclusion of SERVER_NAME and SERVER_PORT into the $_SERVER superglobal for CLI. You can find more changes listed in the NEWS file and can download the latest from the PHP.net site (or your favorite mirror): source, Windows binaries.

In a new post to his blog Marco Tabini offers some suggestions on unit testing - not really a tutorial on how to it, more of an "easy way in" to introducing it to your development process.

Stopping development for weeks while you figure out how to add unit tests to cover your entire codebase is simply something that cannot be done (at least, not if you want to keep your job), no matter what future benefits it might bring. The good news is, adding unit testing to your existing project only takes five minutes - which is pretty much how long it takes to get a unit testing framework installed. That's it. Move on.

He puts the emphasis on unit testing to manage change in a code base, not so much to ensure that the current application runs as it should (not initially at least). He's found them most useful in bugfixing, refactoring and when adding new functionality. Current tests (and even tests written in TDD) can help with all of these. He includes reminders that if the tests aren't written well, they're useless and that once you've started testing, it needs to be continuous, even if they're not perfect.

As is mentioned on PHP.net, the latest release of the 5.3.x series of the language has been released - PHP 5.3.7.

The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.3.7. This release focuses on improving the stability of the PHP 5.3.x branch with over 90 bug fixes, some of which are security related.

Security fixes in this release include updates to crypt_blowfish() and a buffer overflow in crypt(). Enhancements include the fixes for several bugs including ones related to crashing due to internal errors, iterator fixes, sockets, ini settings and more. You can find the full list of changes in the Changelog for this release.

You can download the latest source from the downloads page or, for Windows users, the binaries.

On the main PHP site there's a new announcement about a critical update in a new version to both the PHP 5.2.x and 5.3.x series of releases to correct a problem that could cause a hang or crash from user input - 5.3.5 and 5.2.17.

The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.3.5 and 5.2.17. This release resolves a critical issue, reported as PHP bug #53632 and CVE-2010-4645, where conversions from string to double might cause the PHP interpreter to hang on systems using x87 FPU registers. The problem is known to only affect x86 32-bit PHP processes, regardless of whether the system hosting PHP is 32-bit or 64-bit. You can test whether your system is affected by running this script from the command line.

All users are strongly encouraged to update their releases. While the problem only happens in certain circumstances, it can still be a huge problem since the data comes directly from the user. For more information about the issue see this post.

The main PHP.net site has the release announcement for the two latest versions of the language - PHP 5.3.3 and PHP 5.2.14.

The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.3.3. This release focuses on improving the stability and security of the PHP 5.3.x branch with over 100 bug fixes, some of which are security related. All users are encouraged to upgrade to this release. [...] The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.2.14. This release focuses on improving the stability of the PHP 5.2.x branch with over 60 bug fixes, some of which are security related.

The announcements list some of the major security enhancements and fixes in both new versions as well as a few new features like updates to the PCRE libraries and more.

Note: this PHP 5.2.14 release marks the end of active support for the PHP 5.2.x branch. It is encouraged that you upgrade to PHP 5.3 by following the steps in this migration guide.

The PHP.net site has posted the release announcement for the latest PHP version in the PHP 5.3.x series - 5.3.2:

The PHP development team is proud to announce the immediate release of PHP 5.3.2. This is a maintenance release in the 5.3 series, which includes a large number of bug fixes. [...] For users upgrading from PHP 5.2 there is a migration guide available here, detailing the changes between those releases and PHP 5.3.

Security/bug fixes included in this release take care of things like:

• Safe_mode validation inside tempnam
• A possible open_basedir/safe_mode bypass in sessions
• Added support for SHA-256 and SHA-512 to php's crypt.
• Fixed a bug in the garbage collector that could cause a crash
• Crashing when using ldap_next_reference

For more information on the release and what was fixed see the Changelog. You can download this release immediately - source code or Windows package.

As mentioned on the main PHP site today, the latest version in the PHP 5.2 series has been released - PHP 5.2.13.

The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.2.13. This release focuses on improving the stability of the PHP 5.2.x branch with over 40 bug fixes, some of which are security related. All users of PHP 5.2 are encouraged to upgrade to this release.

For more information about the changes included in this release you can check out the full release announcement or the Changelog. As always, you can get this latest version from the downloads page.