PHP Alive and Kicking 2026.08.04

A PHP Alive and Kicking podcast episode featuring Derick Rethans discussing PHP 8.6 upcoming features including a new Duration class, partial function application, and TLS session resumption. The conversation covers Xdebug updates (native path mapping, improved code coverage, Xdebug Cloud), the philosophy behind date-time handling and why adding a month is harder than it sounds, the PHP deprecation process and two-thirds voting rules, and PHP infrastructure modernization via Ansible. Derick also reflects on his origins as a PHP contributor and the importance of bug triage for the next generation of contributors.