Antony Dovgal points out that Derick Rethans has added the snapshots for PHP 5.3 to the snaps.php.net website.

Short list of what you can find there: Namespaces, __callstatic() magic method, accessing static members through $foo::myFunc(), fully rewritten ini-parser with .htaccess-like user defined ini files for CGI/FastCGI, improved OpenSSL extension, PCRE 7.4, and other fixes and improvements that will never get into 5_2 branch.

He recommends teching throughly before the major release to find all of the bug before the general public does. Builds for both source and Windows systems have been posted.

The latest weekly summary for the PHP mailing lists has been posted over on the Zend Developer Zone. This week, discussions included:

• Sandboxed semaphores
• Focus on *printf [continued]
• PHP 5.2.1 RC2 and PHP 4.4.5 RC1
• It's all in the HEAD

Descriptions of each of the headings are provided, including code and a "short version" for those on the run.

Be sure to check back each week for a new summary.