Now that we're in to May, there's only one thing on a PHPer's mind (well some of them out there) - testing! This month several groups all around the world have set times for their own TestFests to dedicated time to writing up tests for PHP.

The TestFest is an event that aims at improving the code coverage of the test suite for the PHP language itself. As part of this event, local User Groups (UG) are invited to join the TestFest. [...] All it takes is someone to organize a UG to spearhead the event and to get others involved in writing phpt tests.

Several groups have set up their times (here's the list) including teh Atlanta PHP group's happening today and the Cologne/Bonn user group's happening tomorrow. If you want to get in on the action and haven't found a group, check out the list and see if there's one nearby and join up before the event starts!

Sebastian Bergmann has posted a checklist as a reminder of things to bring with you to your local event.

If you're in the area of The Netherlands and you're into PHP, consider yourself lucky - just look at all the events that Ivo Jansch mentions in one of his more recent blog entries:

PHP is still growing in The Netherlands (according to nexen.net, 46% of Dutch domains use PHP). A good indicator of PHP's growth is the number of conferences and other events that are organized this year. [...] This year alone, there are already 6 major (>50) events; 3 done, 3 to go.

Some of the events (like Dutch Joomla Days and the PHP Business Seminar) have already passed but there's still a chance to get in on a few others like Kings of Code and the Dutch PHP Conference.

According to this post on the PEAR blog, the first PEAR bug triage is now over:

PEAR's bug tracker hit the 600+ open bugs mark a month ago. [...] So with 600+ open bugs (not including the feature requests), we had to do something. [...] The logical step was to hold our own bug smashing event and see how it works for PEAR.

Back on March 22nd and 23rd (Easter weekend) they hunted for bugs. Several developers showed to help out and many bugs were fixed and they managed to bring the number of open bugs for PEAR down to 547 with the two days of work. There were some milestones reached too:

Thanks to the triage, we are close to reaching two important milestones: Closing bug reports with lower bug ID than 1000 (1 bug left!) and 2000 (5 left).

The Zend Developer Zone has an announcement about an upcoming conference, the California Central Coast Code Camp, that one of Zend's own will be presenting at:

The inaugural Central Coast Code Camp will be held September 22nd and 23rd, 2007, at the Embassy Suites in San Luis Obispo, CA. [...] Kevin Schroder, podcasting wizard and member of the Zend Professional Services team, (think X-Men without the Spandex) will be speaking on PHP Security and PHP Performance.

You can get more information about the Code Camp from the event's main website.