I am proud to announce that the first PHP Package Development Standards publication, pds/skeleton, has been released as stable at version 1.0.0.

This publication has been a great working effort. Everything from researching first a subset (and then the entirety) of Packagist, to putting together the first drafts, to working with reviewers and refining the publication, has been a wonderful experience. From the first uncommitted work in early Nov 2016, to the stable release a few days ago, the whole process has taken just about 12 weeks of evening and weekend time.

Many thanks to the early reviewers (you know who you are!) for your input, criticism, and suggestions. Thanks also to the issue submitters and commenters, and especially to to everyone who submitted a pull request. These people contributed serious effort and attention to the publication, which helps to show that the publication really is a community-based work.

Roughly 78,000 packages already comply with the pds/skeleton standard, although they may not know it. To formally show that your package has adopted the standard, "require-dev" it via Composer, or display a badge on your README.

Although I have a few ideas in mind, what do you think the next PDS publication should focus on? Let me know if you have a particular area of interest.

Read the Reddit discussion about this post here.

Are you stuck with a legacy PHP application? You should buy my book because it gives you a step-by-step guide to improving you codebase, all while keeping it running the whole time.