image credit: symfony-live.com

I’ve just returned from the first international Symfony Live conference in Paris. There are currently a lot of great things happening in the symfony (and Symfony ) world which I’d like to share.

Here are the highlights of what has happened in the symfony world and what we can expect in the near future.

CMS in symfony

Dailymotion and Yahoo cases prove that symfony is a suitable solution for the enterprise and high traffic websites. We all know, however, that there is a small number of good open source solutions based on this framework. Not so long ago we didn’t even have a decent Content Management System.

Recently it has changed as we can choose from three maturing CMS solutions: Sympal, Diem and Apostrophe. Good as they are they cannot compete with Drupal in the amount of features and easiness of use. Fabien called them nice experiments where we learnt a lot. Later we can make use of it while building killer CMS based on Symfony 2.

There is no need to go out of focus and it’s obvious we need only one good CMS. Jonathan Wage (Sympal) and Tom Boutell (Apostrophe) created a mailing list to join efforts in making it happen. I’m not sure if any of Diem representatives were present but I think everyone will happily join this initiative.

phpBB4 based on Symfony 2

Another great announcement was made by Nils Adermann, a lead developer of phpBB. The fourth version of phpBB will be based on Symfony 2. Again this is a great news as phpBB is one of the most famous PHP applications. Together with a brand new CMS this will definitely boost Symfony’s popularity.

If you’re interested in getting involved in an Open Source project, then Nils is looking for help on phpBB4. Everyone is welcome. Remember that not only coders are needed in the Open Source projects!

Symfony 2 Revealed

Symfony 2 Revealed was the last presentation at the conference. It was also the most awaited one.

Fabien Potencier, the project leader of Symfony, almost like Steve Jobs presenting ipad, introduced a next generation framework – Symfony 2. Symfony finally got its capital ‘S’.

As it’s a completely new framework there is a LOT to write about. For now I have only one thing to say.

Symfony 2 is awesome!!!

Read more about its revolutionary features in my next blog post.

No sismo

Sismo is a Continuous Integration Server developed in symfony. Up to now it’s used only by Sensio as it’s not opened yet.

If you hoped to use it some day then don’t expect it to be released any time soon. If you plan to install Continuous Integration Server in the upcoming month or a year just choose something else (like Hudson or Cruise Control).

Git

Scott Chacon made a great introduction to git and distributed version control systems. It was very similar to his progit book.

Most of the attendees still use solutions like subversion and were all impressed by git features. I think it’s a next generation SCM and soon will start pushing subversion out of the scene. The same way CVS was replaced by subversion, now subversion is going to be replaced by git.

It’s worth mentioning that Symfony 2 is hosted on github. Git is from now on used as a main SCM by core developers.

If you still don’t know git I strongly recommend reading progit. It’s also available online.

Socializing

Socializing is always one of the most important things at the conference. During Symfony Live there was plenty of occasions to do that.

The day before the conference many of us met in the Frog Pub for sfPot. After the first day there was a spontaneously organized pub tour. The next evening a github meet up took place. That was a long night in Patrick’s Irish Pub with free drinks and snacks sponsored by github.

I talked to really many interesting and experienced people from all over the world. At other PHP conferences I usually meet developers with various level of skills. It was a bit different this time as the knowledge of these guys was simply impressive. It seems like symfony devs are all smart guys.

Thank you all for hanging around and see you next time!