PHP 8.0 RC1 Released

The first release candidate of the big PHP 8.0 is now available for testing.

PHP 8.0 is continuing to enhance the performance with the introduction of the PHP JIT and other optimizations as a big upgrade over PHP 7.x and now an insanely different beast from the sluggish days of PHP 5.x. PHP 8.0 also brings the JSON support into PHP core rather than an optional extension, improves the PHP GD imaging library, cryptographic message syntax support within PHP OpenSSL, PHP Zip improvements, and countless other enhancements. The PHP language now supports union types, the nullsafe operator, attributes, match expressions, and more.

Basically, the just-in-time support is the huge feature of PHP 8.0 but there is also other performance work and beneficial improvements to the language syntax while also having many smaller enhancements throughout.

With PHP 8.0 RC1 there are just bug fixes compared to the prior betas. Details on PHP 8.0 RC1 via PHP.net.

Bi-weekly release candidates are expected to continue until hitting the general availability release around the end of November.