New releases 🎉 Big improvements 💪🏼

[simonhamp]

These are a couple of really significant releases on our path to beta.

laravel v0.6 and electron v0.8 🎉

Please check the release notes for all of the details, but the highlights are:

• The electron-plugin package has been dropped and is now incorporated directly in the electron package. This makes keeping the package up to date and in-step with the plugin much more reliable. It also makes developing the plugin easier 🤘🏼
• The Child Processes functionality has been released 🚀
• Some improvements to the Window API now mean working with windows is more flexible 🎸

To get these latest versions, you may need to explicitly update your nativephp/electron dependency to "nativephp/electron": "^0.8" and run composer update.

Thanks

Huge thanks go to @gwleuverink @danielpetrica @LukeTowers @RobertWesner @kritish-dhaubanjar for their contributions!

And to the NativePHP's sponsors for supporting our work in building, testing and releasing these updates.

An update on PHP version support

PHP 8.1

Earlier this year, a proposal to extend PHP's security support passed, which - among other things - means that all version of PHP from 8.1 onwards will now each be supported for four years instead of three. This means that PHP 8.1 will not reach end of life this month, as support has been extended until 31st December 2025.

I think this is a great move for PHP and the whole ecosystem. As a result, NativePHP will continue to support PHP 8.1 as our baseline PHP version, which means all library code must work with PHP 8.1 features.

PHP 8.4

PHP 8.4 is in the final stages of release and is due to reach general availability towards the end of this month. We're working closely with the static-php-cli team to make sure 8.4 is ready for all platforms as soon as it becomes available.

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That's it for now. Look out for more exciting news coming in the next few weeks.

If you're enjoying seeing the progress that NativePHP is making, please consider sponsoring 🙏 every little helps.

[simonhamp]

With a couple of follow-up releases, there's now also the composer native:dev command, improved error reporting when running native:serve and a new Window::all() helper, thanks to @JCombee!