This Week In PHP Internals | June 24, 2026
Chapters
0:00 Intro
0:10 Ad - Ballast
0:32 Deprecations RFC
1:36 On the chopping block
2:14 The CSV side-quest
2:51 A stopwatch for PHP
4:03 Primary Constructors
4:37 Function autoloading, mark 5
5:18 Failing Votes
5:53 Passing Votes
6:30 Withdrawals
7:10 Revisions
7:27 Governance
7:51 A Human Story
8:30 Quick Hits
9:16 TL;DR
Sponsor
Ballast — a deterministic, git-history-derived software durability score (does shipped work last, or churn and get redone?); early access opening now (an Artisan Build product): https://artisan.build/ballast
Deprecations & PHP 8.6
[RFC] Deprecations for PHP 8.6 (Gina P. Banyard): https://wiki.php.net/rfc/deprecations... · thread: https://news-web.php.net/php.internal...
_() / gettext alias deprecation discussion — PR: https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/1...
[RFC] Deprecate SplFileObject CSV methods (Muhammed Arshid KV) — PR: https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/2...
[PRE-RFC] Deprecate returning from a finally block (Osama Aldemeery): https://news-web.php.net/php.internal... · impact analysis: https://github.com/aldemeery/php-rfcs...
New language / library proposals
[RFC] Time\Duration class (Tim Düsterhus & Derick Rethans): https://news-web.php.net/php.internal...
[Pre-RFC] Primary Constructors (Rob Landers): internals thread, June 17
[RFC] Function Autoloading (mark 5) (Paul M. Jones): https://wiki.php.net/rfc/function-aut... · PR: https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/2...
[RFC] Literal Scalar Types v0.2 (Seifeddine Gmati): https://wiki.php.net/rfc/literal_scal... · PR: https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/2...
[RFC] Pure-code source files / .phpc → ?psf (Hendrik Mennen): https://wiki.php.net/rfc/optional_php...
[Discussion] str_mask() → grapheme_mask() (Sepehr Mahmoudi): internals threads, June 18 & 22 · RFC karma granted June 24 (wiki sepehrphp, RFC drafting underway)
[RFC idea] DTLS in the openssl extension — Openssl\Dtls (Gianfrancesco Aurecchia): internals thread, June 24 (gauging interest; working PoC against master, suite green; long-open request, php-src bug #76629)
Votes (live tallies off the wiki, as of recording, June 24)
[VOTE] Bound-Erased Generic Types (Seifeddine Gmati) — primary 7 / 19 / 10, needs 2/3, closes June 28; secondary syntax in T/out T 24 vs +T/-T 2: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/bound_erased... · https://externals.io/message/131236
[VOTE] __exists() (Nicolas Grekas) — 2 / 12 / 7, closes June 28: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/exists-magic... · https://externals.io/message/131243
[VOTE] ReflectionAttribute::getCurrent() (Daniel Scherzer) — CANCELLED June 18 (was 4 / 7 / 8): https://wiki.php.net/rfc/reflectionat...
[VOTE] Deprecate returning values from __construct()/__destruct() (Tim Düsterhus) — 37 / 0 / 0, closes June 29: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/deprecate-re...
[VOTE] Limit maximum number of filter chains (Sjoerd Langkemper) — 30 / 0 / 2, closes June 26: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/limit-maximu... · PR: https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/2...
[VOTE] Locale::getDisplayKeyword() / getDisplayKeywordValue() (Weilin Du) — 18 / 0 / 2, closed June 23, accepted (announced June 24): https://wiki.php.net/rfc/getdisplayke... · PR: https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/2...
[VOTE] Separation of Third-Party Extension Documentation (Jordi Kroon) — primary 21 / 1 / 1, closes July 3; secondaries — hosting: subpath www.php.net/manual/extensions/ 11 vs contrib.php.net subdomain 8 (5 abstain); user notes: Remove 17 vs Migrate 4 (3 abstain): https://wiki.php.net/rfc/third_party_... · https://news-web.php.net/php.internal...
[Intent to vote] Const object property write (Khaled Alam) — vote opens June 29: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/const_object... · PR: https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/2...
Governance & process
[RFC] Working Groups (Ben Ramsey): https://wiki.php.net/rfc/working_groups · Policy PR: https://github.com/php/policies/pull/35
[RFC] Deprecate PEAR and recommend Composer (James Titcumb) — abandoned: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/deprecate_pe...
Withdrawn / closed this week
[RFC] Case-sensitive PHP (Jorg Sowa) — withdrawn June 23: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/case_sensiti...
Quick hits & extensions
Should base_convert warn on precision loss (Sjoerd Langkemper): internals thread, June 18
base_convert/hexdec/bindec/octdec ValueError on invalid characters (Sjoerd Langkemper): https://wiki.php.net/rfc/php86_valuee...
Native terminal helpers v0.5.0 (Pratik Bhujel): https://github.com/prateekbhujel/php-...
Releases: PHP 8.4.23RC1, PHP 8.5.8RC1 (June 17)
Raw feed: https://externals.io · RFC wiki: https://wiki.php.net/rfc