PHP 7.4 Reaches Feature Freeze, Beta 1 Released

After already having gone through three alpha releases, PHP 7.4 has reached its feature freeze and branching. As a result, the first PHP 7.4 beta is now available that will follow by multiple betas and release candidates while hopefully being released by the end of November.

PHP 7.4 brings SQLite3 Online Backup API support, support for TGA files within the GD library, the PHP FFI extension is now present for accessing C functions/variables/structures from PHP, preload functionality, performance improvements, hardening to the systemd PHP FPM service, PHP Hash is now integrated into PHP core, TLS 1.3 support for OpenSSL streams, and many fixes.

Speaking specifically to the PHP 7.4 Beta 1 release, there are many fixes, deprecation of the curly brace syntax for accessing array elements and string offsets, deprecation of various aging functions, and updated LiteSpeed API.

More details on the PHP 7.4 Beta are available from today's announcement on PHP.net.