On his blog today Sebastian Bergmann has posted about new functionality that's been added to the PHPUnit unit testing package for PHP - support for BDD and Stories.

PHPUnit_Extensions_Story_TestCase is a new extension for PHPUnit that has been contributed by Xait, a company that I visited last fall. It adds a story framework with a Domain-Specific Language (DSL) for Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD).

He includes an example of the new extension in action - creating a Story, adding Steps to it and the output that would result from the execution (reading?) of the example.

Stefan Mischook has made another update to his OOP beginners tutorial:

I've update my beginners tutorial on object oriented PHP adding steps 18-22. Again, this is a code intensive article where I expect you to follow along with your PHP editors.

You can check out the full tutorial (well, up to step 22 of course) on the KillerPHP.com website to get started with working with objects, classes and related functionality.

If you're running CentOS 4 and want to get PHP up and running on your installation, check out this quick and dirty guide posted over on the HowToBoard.com.

The process really only involves six or seven steps to get things up and running, but you'll need to know how to get in and edit things before you can build the packages up right. Oh, and of course, a little credit where credit's due:

Enjoy! Do not forget to install new php-pear as well. Special thanks to Peter Zaitsev.

Greg Beaver, the ever-vigilant promoter and coder of the PEAR project has announced the latest version of the PEAR project has been released - version 1.4.9.

The latest stable release of the PEAR installer, version 1.4.9, has been released at pear.php.net. This release addresses a critical bug introduced in the release of PEAR 1.4.8 earlier this month. This version has been rigorously tested to ensure no future breakage (the last release had inordinate time pressure due to external circumstances). You can read about it and retrieve it at http://pear.php.net/PEAR.

Also mentioned in the post is their embarking on the next leap in PEAR's evolution - version 1.5.0. It won't be a major leap up (like from 1.3.x to 1.4.x), but many changes will be made - including extensive work on how PECL extensions are installed and implemented.

There's a pointer in this post from Sean Coates to this mailing list message from Gabor Hojtsy talking about his resignation from the post of editor of the PHP manual.

I have been pondering through this writeup in the last couple of weeks, and the recent OSCOM events [1] prompted me to be straight and honest, and step back from the leadership of the PHP Documentation and from the list on the documentation frontpage consequently.

To be honest, I have not been active the last couple of months, only pariticipated in some directional discussions, and unfortunately I don't see a light in the future to be able to contribute more. Certainly I don't deserve the position to be named and listed as the PHP Documentation Editor anymore. There are quite a few more active people, who should get the credit they deserve.

He mentions some of the other things going on in his life - work, personal life, other web development sites - and he just dosen't have the time to give it the effort it needs. He's leaving his post knowing that there are plenty of qualified people in the PHP team to take his place.

Thanks for all of your hard work, Gabor - the entire PHP community appreciates all you've done.