Tag Archives: phpcompatibility

codesniffer, open source, PHP, PHPCompatibility

Code quality tool PHP_CodeSniffer has a new maintainer but needs corporate support

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Introduction

In a recent and significant development for the PHP_CodeSniffer project, a change in maintainership has taken place, with Juliette Reinders Folmer now at the helm. This transition has not only brought fresh energy and vision to the project but also signals a call to action for companies and organizations to actively support its ongoing development. As PHP_CodeSniffer plays a crucial role in maintaining code quality and standards within the PHP community, corporate sponsorship is now more crucial than ever.

New Leadership and Repository Migration

The PHP_CodeSniffer project, originally developed by Greg Sherwood of Squiz Labs, has undergone a notable shift in leadership. Juliette Reinders Folmer was the main contributor for the last year and, with Greg having insufficient time to continue leading the project, it was decided to migrate the project to a new repository, signaling a new chapter in its development. The move is aimed at fostering a more collaborative and community-driven approach to ensure the tool’s continued evolution and adaptability to the ever-changing landscape of PHP development.

Juliette Reinders Folmer, a well-respected figure in the PHP community, brings a wealth of experience and a fresh perspective to the project. Her commitment to maintaining and enhancing PHP_CodeSniffer aligns with the community’s expectations and highlights a dedication to its continued success. Juliette is also the lead developer for other quality assurance tools like PHPCompatibility and PHPCSUtils.

The Importance of Corporate Sponsorship

With the PHP_CodeSniffer project been transitioned in the coming days, the need for financial support from the community, especially corporate entities, is paramount. Open source projects like PHP_CodeSniffer rely on contributions, both in terms of code and financial backing, to thrive and remain sustainable over the long term.
Corporate sponsorship ensures that the project can dedicate resources, including developer time, to addressing issues, implementing new features, and maintaining compatibility with the latest PHP releases. It also allows for the organization of events, workshops, and community outreach initiatives, fostering a stronger and more engaged user base.

How Companies Can Contribute

To support the ongoing development and maintenance of PHP_CodeSniffer, companies are encouraged to sign up for sponsorship through the project’s Open Collective page (https://opencollective.com/php_codesniffer). Open Collective provides a transparent and accountable platform for managing funds, and it allows sponsors to track how their contributions are utilized.

By sponsoring PHP_CodeSniffer, companies not only demonstrate their commitment to the PHP community but also ensure that the tools they rely on for code quality continue to evolve and meet the demands of modern PHP development.

A call to action for developers

If you’re a developer reading this and your project relies on PHP_CodeSniffer or any of the dependant projects (such as PHPCompatiblity or PHPCSUtils) in its quality assurance process, consider what contributions mean :

  • Receiving updates to PHP_CodeSniffer to handle new syntax that is added to PHP
  • Receiving updates to individuals sniffs in all standards to be able to handle new PHP syntax
  • Improving contributor friendliness of projects
  • Reviewing contributions and coaching contributors
  • Coaching potential candidates for joining the maintainer pool, ensuring the project survives long-term

If you value the quality of your code, push your project manager, product owner, CTO or CEO to contribute to the project, given they’re saving not just on valuable development time, but on bug-fixing, just by using the project.

codesniffer, PHP, PHPCompatibility

PHPCompatibility update

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Update (Nov 3, 2013) : changed the parameters to reflect the new changes in PHP_CodeSniffer

Just a quick post about the updates made to PHPCompatibility.

I did a talk on PHP 5.4/5.5 at Zendcon, not just about what’s new and why you should upgrade, but also about the way PHPCompatibility can ease the pain. I received very good feedback, as well as very interesting questions. As a result, I added a feature I’ve wanted to add for a long time : the option to specify which PHP version to check for.

Here’s the caveat : it requires a change to PHP_CodeSniffer. I’m hoping that change will be accepted soon. From that point onwards, if you have the latest PHP_CodeSniffer (you might want to get it from Github).

So then you will be able to do :

phpcs --standard=PHPCompatibility --runtime-set testVersion 5.4 <path-of-your-php-files>

You can also test for backwards compatibility of your code by specifying versions like 5.2, which causes it to check whether you’re using functions or keywords not known to this older version. Quite nice if you’re coding on PHP 5.5, but your system engineer tells you half way through the project the project will have to be deployed on 5.2.

Important note : if you want to test backwards compatibility, it’s best to run on the latest PHP version available (5.5 right now), for the simple reason that if you have, for example, the keyword ‘yield’ in your code, PHP_CodeSniffer can only recognize it when you’re running PHP 5.5. It can only tell you it’s not available in previous versions if it actually knows what it is.

Expect more compatibility tools soon, as I have some more ideas, such as how to automatically figure out whether and where you’re still relying on register_globals and magic quotes 😉