Sebastian Bergmann has shared a presentation he originally gave at an Etsy event covering some of the history behind the popular PHPUnit tool and the development it's been through.

When Noah Sussman asked me to give a Code as Craft Technology Talk last week when I was consulting for Etsy I immediately said yes. [...] Just like with a talk that I gave last year, I suddenly had a chain of associations in my head that I just had to follow. And down the rabbit hole I went once more ...

He talks about the origins of PHPUnit (and mentions a few other tools), the move from PHP4 to PHP5, a change in version control from SVN to Git and features of the tool including mock objects and data providers. He also notes that not all tests are "good tests" and how, sometimes, backwards compatibility breaks are a good thing.

Larry Garfield has posted the results of some of his research into popular PHP frameworks and projects and see how they handle their structure as it relates to the PSR-0 standard.

As Drupal is in the process of considering how to restructure code to best leverage the PSR-0 standard, I figured it would be wise to take a quick survey of how some other major projects organize their code bases. This is not a complete rundown of every project, simply roughly comparable notes for those areas Drupal is currently discussing. I am posting it here in the hopes that it will be useful to more than just Drupal.

The projects he looked to for his examples were:

• CakePHP
• Symfony2
• Silex
• CodeIgniter
• Zend Framework 2
• Composer

On Dzone.com today Giorgio Sironi has posted what he considers to be some of the most popular Open Source PHP projects of 2011 including Symfony2, Doctrine and HipHop.

This non-scientific analysis of the popular and exciting PHP projects starts from researches on active projects on SourceForge and GitHub; the latter is where most of the collaboration and involvement of PHP developers is today. I've also crowdsourced the question on Twitter to catch projects I wasn't aware of, and I hope to do the same with you.

Other projects included in his list are:

• Symfony2 Components
• Moodle
• Composer and Packagist
• Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress

Have a project you think he missed? Let him know!

Lineke Kerckhoffs-Willems has a new post to her blog today with an update about their in-progress site that wants to share tech knowledge through video, ProTalk:

A lot has happened since my October post announcing ProTalk, the secret project I am working on with my friend, Kim Rowan. So much in fact that now seems the ideal time to update you on our progress! Now, down to business! Since announcing the project in early October we have achieved the [several] project milestones.

The milestones include hosting by Combell (who also host Joind.in), a new domain, a commitment from Ibuildings for a design/logo/wireframe set and a new twitter account.

ProTalk is a "community resource aiming to provide a central point of access to video and audio content with a PHP focus." For more information and to sign up for details when they launch, check out their new site.

On NetTuts.com today there's a new tutorial helping you get started with Zend Framework "from scratch". They outline the full process - from download to the creation of a first application.

Ready to take your PHP skills to the next level? In this new "From Scratch" series, we'll focus exclusively on Zend Framework, a full-stack PHP framework created by Zend Technologies. First in our tutorial series, is "Getting Started with Zend Framework."

The tutorial (executed in a Windows environment) is broken up into seven parts:

• Download Zend Framework
• Set up your Zend Framework Environment
• Create your First Zend Framework Project
• Learn about Zend Framework's MVC Structure
• Pass Data From a Controller to its View
• Create a Layout in Zend Framework
• Create New Controllers and Actions

They use the Windows version of Apache to host the site (installation instructions not included). If you'd like to get the source for this tutorial series as it evolves, you can find it on github.

On PHPBuilder.com Jason Gilmore has posted a first peek at Zend Framework 2, an upcoming reworking of the popular framework with PHP 5.3-centric features.

Version 2.0 seeks to improve upon the current release in a number of ways, focusing on making it easier to get started using the framework, improving performance, and fully embracing the latest PHP language enhancements made available to version 5.3. [...] Although the official release won't be out for several more months, it never hurts to take an early look at what the future holds for a technology used by countless PHP developers around the globe. In this article I'll present a meandering introduction to the key version 2.0 features that I find particularly compelling.

He starts with a brief tutorial on getting the latest version of ZF2 from the git repository and creating basic project. The changes in the framework have fallen into a "rewrite only where it makes sense" mentality and changes have really only been made transparently to the backend or as new features/components like module management and Doctrine 2 integration. He also points out a few resources you can use to keep up to date on the latest from the framework including the changelog, mailing list and the ZF2 blog.

In this new post to his blog Hartmut Holzgraefe looks at a new effort that wants to be "the next PHP" while still being PHP. Confused? Take a look at PHPReboot.

PHP.reboot is a reboot of PHP, each Hollywood movie has its own reboot, why not doing the same for one of the most popular programming language. The aim is to keep the philosophy of PHP but adapt it to be more in sync with the Web of 2010.

Hartmut's post is a "braindump" of some of his thoughts about the project including responses to some of its main claims:

• less $, less ';' like in javascript
• secure by default: no eval, no magic quotes/string interpolation
• full unicode support
• a SQL compatible syntax
• URI/file literal

In his opinion, the language doesn't look much like PHP anymore and would not only be incompatible with current PHP but also wouldn't benefit from the C libraries PHP has access to.

...so why should it have the letters PHP in its name at all?

Christian Weiske has a quick post about a handy PEAR-related project that might be in risk of fading away - a plea for help with pearhub.org.

Troels Knak-Nielsen, father of pearhub, wrote to the pear-dev mailing list: "Unfortunately I have absolutely no time at hand for this project and probably won't for a foreseeable time. I still think it fills a need, so I'd be happy to hand over the keys to anyone who will take it upon them to move the project forward. I'll try to assist as best as I can, but probably won't have much time to spare. But the project is fairly simple anyway, so it should be relatively easy to get the main idea."

If you're interested in hosting or helping out with the project, let Troels know. Pearhub lets any project with a publicly facing repository be installed via a PEAR channel quickly and easily. For more information, see the project's FAQ.

Kevin Schroeder has a new post to his blog today asking "Why PHP?" - not so much a "why you should chose PHP for your development", more of a why PHP is the way it is.

Today on twitter there was a conversation going on about the responsiveness of the core PHP developers to PHP users. [...] This post isn't necessarily to correct perceived errors, to stand behind correct statements, or to state what I believe the problem is. Rather, it is to add something to the conversation that I don't think I've seen much of. The Twitter conversation was, for me, more of a contemplation kickoff and so the purpose of this post is to propose some thoughts for consideration. I don't have sufficient karma to propose changes directly, but I have bet my career on PHP and I want to see it beat the crap out of every language out there.

He points out that most of the opinions out there seem to be of the "what" PHP is rather than the "why" PHP is. He notes that the discussions about the core development (and developers) that's been happening recently is more of a symptom of a larger problem - an unclear definition as to what PHP is and what problem it's there to solve.

Christian Weiske has a new post about a move the phpfarm tool has made over to SourceForge for its project page. phpfarm makes it simple to switch between multiple versions of PHP on the same server to make debugging and development a much simpler task (especially if you're not in a homogeneous environment).

phpfarm, the tool that lets you install multiple PHP versions beside each other, finally got a proper project page on SourceForge. By moving from svn.php.net to SF, phpfarm got a nice git repository, a wiki and a ticketing system. It also has a Phing build file now which generates and uploads release files, so people don't have to install git to get phpfarm.

His post also includes some of the changes made in the latest release (0.1.0) and how you can clone the code from the SF.net repository.