PHP_CodeSniffer 0.3.0 (beta) released

I released version 0.3.0 of PHP_CodeSniffer through PEAR today. It's been quite a while since the last release, but that is only because I've been hard at work adding a lot of new sniffs and doing a lot of work testing the existing ones.

The biggest change in this version is the addition of a new coding standard. PHP_CodeSniffer did come with the PEAR coding standard loaded by default, but it now comes with the Squiz coding standard as well. I wasn't sure how the addition of an external coding standard was going to be received, so I hadn't really considered making the Squiz standard part of the core download. I decided to add the standard in the end because I think it is important to offer users some choice over the coding standards they use, and the Squiz standard provides a great deal of additional sniffs that can be used together or in a user-defined standard.

The PEAR standard also (finally) got a set of doc comment tests that check for file, function and class doc comments. This is a really great milestone for PHP_CodeSniffer development as these were the last sniffs that needed to be written before I could consider a beta release.

So for that reason, PHP_CodeSniffer is now finally in beta. I'm not planning any additional development for the RC or stable release. Obviously, bugs will be fixed if they are submitted, but no new features are planned for development. I really want to stabilise what we have and get out version 1.0.0 so more people can start using it in their projects.