All software has dependencies: programming language, framework, and libraries. New versions for these dependencies with security fixes, bug fixes, or new features are regularly released. A new version is not always fully compatible with its predecessor. Teams that can rely on their test automation to answer the question of whether the new version of a dependency is problematic or not are in a good position.
This presentation shows best practices for upgrading dependencies without fear in projects that have high test coverage as well as approaches for projects without test automation.
I most recently presented “Fearless Dependency Upgrades” at the International PHP Conference on . Previous events include betterCode() PHP.
I am Sebastian Bergmann. I started writing PHPUnit in 2000 and still maintain it. In the same year I gave my first talk at a PHP conference. As a co-founder of thePHP.cc, I help teams in training courses and through consulting and coaching with everything related to PHPUnit, with quality gates for working with LLM-based coding agents, and with supply chain security.
I helped start the PHP Foundation and serve on its board. I have also represented the interests of Open Source at the European Commission and am active in the Open Source working group of the German Informatics Society (Gesellschaft für Informatik).
Where you can meet me next is listed under events. The next dates of my training courses are in the training overview.
On , I will be in Frankfurt am Main at the PIMCORE Community Dev Days. There I will give the presentation “Speed is a byproduct of trust”.