Laravel devs using PostgreSQL, Laravel 13.23 adds support for PostgreSQL's USING clause in migrations. 👀

Why is this useful?

Imagine you have a column storing dates as text (2026-08-02) and want to convert it to a proper DATE column.

PostgreSQL requires a USING clause to describe how existing values should be converted.

Laravel now supports this directly with ->using().

pest 5 introduces time-balanced sharding

this feature allows you to scale your CI horizontally while ensuring all those workflows take exactly the same time

insane, check this: youtu.be/bBXsr1ix_dQ?si=YLpRoyS8vo6JkguK

I’m currently trying out Pest 5, and its TIA engine caught my attention.

In one of my projects, the full test suite could take up to 10 minutes. With TIA, the relevant tests now run in just a few seconds.

This could make a huge difference in everyday Laravel development. 🚀

This Week in PHP Internals — July 29 (recorded at Laracon US!)

42 RFC ballots open at once. The 35-ballot deprecation vote has list() LOSING 17-19, _() failing 6-18, and dechunk split 15-13. Caleb White's pipe assignment operator (|>=) split its vote 8-8-3. Readonly defaults (17-0) and const object property writes (11-2) are clear. Time\Duration closes Friday at 33-1 with full method names winning 28-2. And the literal scalar types vote lasted exactly 18 minutes before its own author retracted it over process rules — it reopens tomorrow.

Full rundown: youtu.be/Af_8W6wxx6k

Hey LaraDevs

Pretty stacked week in the Laravel world.Laracon US brought Laravel LSP (official language server for any editor), Pest 5 with Test Impact Analysis, CPX 2.0, and some solid Cloud updates (scale-to-zero across the whole stack + Next.js/Nuxt support).

Also had Laravel 13.23, a new Livewire patch, Queue-SQL, and the AI SDK getting human-in-the-loop approvals.

Full roundup if you want the details:
go.itanea.fr/adwl062