RFC Tracker

Changes the release manager policy to three per PHP version, two hands-on and one hands-off adviser, in line with current practice.

Adds a global SortDirection enum with Ascending and Descending cases as a shared, type-safe way to express sort order.

Lets you put a doc comment on each function parameter and read it with the new ReflectionParameter::getDocComment().

Lets pack() and unpack() take < and > byte order markers on the f and d float codes, matching the integer syntax added in PHP 8.6.

Makes closures cheaper by inferring static when $this is unused and caching stateless closures, though only the caching part was merged.

Adds grapheme_strrev() to intl, which reverses a string by grapheme cluster so emoji and combined characters stay intact.

Adds the form feed character (\f) to the default set of characters that trim(), ltrim() and rtrim() strip.

Adds a TLS session class and stream context options so clients and servers can save, store and resume TLS sessions.

Adds mysqli::quote_string(), which escapes a string and wraps it in single quotes, like PDO::quote(), to close a double-quote injection hole.

Adds exception and silent modes for stream errors, with structured StreamError objects and a StreamErrorCode enum you can inspect.

Adds Perl-style < and > byte order modifiers to pack() and unpack(), so signed integers can be little-endian or big-endian.

Changes the PHP 8.5 deprecation of __sleep() and __wakeup() into a docs-only soft deprecation, so no warning is emitted.

Changes the RFC policy to require two weeks of discussion, a heads-up email before votes, and no votes ending over the holidays.

Adds a clamp() function that returns a value if it falls between min and max, or the nearest bound if it doesn't.

Deprecates PECL as the recommended way to install PHP extensions and makes PIE the recommended installer instead.

Adds a partitioned option to setcookie(), setrawcookie() and session cookies so PHP can send CHIPS Partitioned cookies without a manual header.

Adds PHP 8.5 warnings for coercing NAN, casting out of range floats to int, destructuring non-arrays and some isset()/empty() offset checks.

Adds a $locale parameter to grapheme_strpos(), grapheme_stripos() and related functions so matching follows a language's rules.

Deprecates dozens of old PHP features in 8.5, from backticks and (integer) casts to __sleep(), null array keys and curl_close(), for removal in PHP 9.

Lets you put #[\Deprecated] on a trait so PHP emits a deprecation warning whenever a class uses it.