PHP 8.6 Mass Deprecation Vote Underway, Key Items Failing Two-Thirds Threshold

A mass deprecation vote for PHP 8.6 opened on Monday, July 28, 2026, initiated by Gina P. Banyard, comprising 35 separate ballots each requiring a two-thirds majority, with voting running through August 10. While many routine deprecations are passing comfortably, high-profile items such as the list() construct, the gettext _() alias, and the reservation of keywords in, out, and inout are all falling short of the required threshold. The dechunk stream filter ballot is particularly contentious, with developers like Jakub Zelenka and Matteo Beccati arguing the deprecation is premature because no adequate built-in alternative exists and the filter still requires internal maintenance. Separately, Jakub revealed he has already fixed a select limitation on filtered streams in the PHP master branch, meaning that improvement will ship in PHP 8.6 regardless of the vote outcome. A new RFC introducing a pipe assignment operator, |>=, submitted by Caleb White, also reached its voting stage on Tuesday after receiving detailed guidance from Tim Düsterhus.