It has been a while since we’ve received any significant news in regard to Zend Framework 2.0. The last time we discussed it on the php|a blog was back in March. However, this week saw the release of several new announcements from Matthew Weier O’Phinney, project lead for Zend Framework.

First, O’Phinney announced the new roadmap published on the Zend Framework wiki. This new roadmap reaffirms that version 2.0 will focus less on new features and more on refactoring, improved code unification, and performance. In Matthew’s words: “The primary thrust of ZF 2.0 is to make a more consistent, well-documented product, improving developer productivity and runtime performance.” This is good news for anyone that uses Zend Framework regularly.

Another exciting development is that ZF2.0 will be developed in a Git repository, instead of Subversion. In addition to the official Zend Framework 2.0 Git repository, several mirrors exist on Github as well. One of the goals of the move to Git is to make it easier for individuals to contribute code to the project, as Git’s distributed nature will allow this to happen more efficiently. There is even talk of establishing a more formal community review team.

Accompanying these announcements was a renewed call for developer assistance. Part of the conversion to 2.0 involves using the new namespaces feature in PHP 5.3 and, while many components have already been converted, there is a need for developers to jump in and help with the remaining work. In the Git repository, the current state of this conversion is tracked in the README-DEV.txt file. If there’s a component you rely on, especially in the Zend_Service part of the framework, make sure to check its status. Any component not “adopted” by someone runs the risk of getting marked as obsolete and not making it into the 2.0 release.

If you’re interested in helping out, or just want to keep closer tabs on development, head on over to the mailing lists page on the wiki and subscribe to the contributor list.