PHP 7.3 Is In Ubuntu 19.10, PHP 7.4 Hopefully Will Make It Into Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

One of the benefits of upgrading to Ubuntu Server 19.10 this month is for a newer version of PHP7 providing new features and better performance. While that took close to one year to land PHP 7.3 in Ubuntu 19.10, it looks like next spring's Ubuntu 20.04 LTS will be pulling in PHP 7.4 that is shipping later this year.

Bryce Harrington is back working at Canonical following the demise of Samsung's Open-Source Group. Bryce shared that over the past month he's been transitioning Ubuntu over to PHP 7.3. At the end of September, PHP 7.2 was finally able to be removed from the Eoan archive.

PHP 7.3 has performance improvements, several new functions, WebP support for GD image create from string, updated SQLite, and other refinements as the annual update to PHP7 that debuted in December 2018.

PHP 7.4 RC1 meanwhile should be out around late November with the much anticipated FFI (Foreign Function Interface) extension to access C structs/functions/variables, preload functionality, SQLite3 Online Backup API, PHP Hash as part of PHP core, TLS 1.3 support for OpenSSL streams and even more performance improvements.

While Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is debuting just months after PHP 7.4, it looks like Canonical will be working to land it quickly given its a Long Term Support (LTS) cycle popular on servers. Bryce noted in the same post he's looking for feedback from those wanting it to land (or not) for 20.04 LTS. Given the performance improvements and FFI being one of the exciting features, PHP 7.4 would be great for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.