Some highlights of changes since 4.2.3:
* PCRE updated to 4.3, GD to 2.0.15
* improved Apache2 support
* much improved stream & URL wrapper support, output compression support
* added CLI (Command Line Interface) SAPI
* debug_backtrace() backported from ZendEngine2
* faster build system
* huge number of other bug fixes and improvements
Packaging changes:
* 'pcre', 'xml', and 'session' modules folded back into main package -
'pcre' and 'xml' is required by PEAR, and 'session' is just too essential
to be separate
* 'gd' module now uses bundled PHP GD library, which is better integrated
* PHP modules use shared distinfo when possible to ease future PHP updates
* ${PREFIX}/bin/php is now CLI version, ${PREFIX}/libexec/cgi-big/php
remains CGI version
APC is the Alternative PHP Cache, which provides a way of boosting the
performance of PHP on heavily-loaded sites by allowing scripts to be cached
in a compiled state, so that the overhead of parsing and compiling can be
almost completely eliminated.
This is an open source product that does the same job as the commercial
product Zend Cache.
