What’s New in PHP 7.4 Alpha 2? Bug Fixes and Upcoming Features

Just in time for the announced release date, PHP 7.4 Alpha 2 is now available, marking another step in the PHP 7.4 release cycle and fixing several bugs.

PHP 7.4 Alpha 1 was released on June 13, and Alpha 2 further paves the way for the final PHP 7.4, expected to be generally available on November 28 2019. Another alpha is scheduled for July 11, a Future Freeze on July 22, followed by several release candidates.

Many Bug Fixes

The current Alpha 2 release includes the following fixes according to the official announcement.

Core

Fixed bug #78151 – Segfault caused by indirect expressions in PHP 7.4 a1.

Fixed bug #78154 – SEND_VAR_NO_REF does not always send a reference.

Fixed bug #78182 – Segfault during reference property assignment.

Date

Fixed bug #69044 – Difference between time and microtime.

GD

Added TGA image support.

MySQLi Extension

Fixed bug #67348 – Reading $dbc->stat modifies $dbc->affected_rows.

Opcache

Fixed bug #78106 – Path resolution fails if opcache is disabled during a request.

Fixed bug #78175 – Segfault during preloading at runtime.

SQLite3

Implemented FR #70950 – SQLite3 online backup API now available.

Although these bug fixes address the alpha version, major changes are still planned for the final release, including new features such as Typed Properties that allow declaring property types in classes.

More Releases Before the Final Version

The final PHP 7.4 is still some way off. Below is the PHP wiki timeline showing upcoming milestones.

PHP 7.4 Alpha 2 is ready for testing and can be downloaded from GitHub.