I just packaged PHP 4.4.0RC1, the release announcement goes as follows:

The PHP Team just released it's first release candidate for PHP 4.4.0. This is solely a bug-fix only release, the increased middle digit is needed because this release changes PHP's Internal API that causes third-party binary extensions to be incompatible with PHP 4.3.x.

This release address a major problem within PHP concerning references. If references where used in a wrong way, PHP would often create memory corruptions which would not always surface and be visible. In other cases it can cause variables and objects to change type or class. If you encountered strange behavior like this, this release might fix it.

Besides addressing this reference related bug, 46 other bugs are fixed. Please test this release and report any bugs or problems in our bugsystem (after searching first).

If all goes well I plan to roll a release of 4.4.0 on June 27th. If there are problems a new RC will follow. Only critical bugs are going to be fixed between RC1 and RC2.

For users of eZ publish , this release will make the CMS run much more stable, because of the reference bug fixes.You can find 4.4.0 RC1 at http://qa.php.net/~derick/ .