Update: Since 7.0.0 is officially out, we updated our binaries as well with the final release.

PHP 7.0 is very very near, if no showstoppers show up during the current Release Candidate #8. And I finally managed to update the package on php-osx.liip.ch, so that you can test and start writing applications on your local OS X machine easily, as well. The installer also automatically does the right thing in the apache configuration with regards to ā€œmod_php7ā€ and ā€œmod_php5ā€.

Furthermore, since we are using CloudFoundry in one of our bigger projects, I also extended the official PHP buildpack to include PHP 7.0 (and some other things like varnish, but that's not relevant for this). This way we can easily see, if our apps still work with PHP 7 and do some benchmarks (the initial ones looked promising). To use the buildpack, add the following line to your manifest.yml

buildpack: https://github.com/chregu/cf-php-varnish-buildpack.git

and adjust .bp-config/options.json to include (and maybe also changeĀ your composer.json to use PHP 7)

"PHP_VERSION": "{PHP_70_LATEST}"

Be aware, that I didn't port many of the extensions the official buildpack includes, so your milage may vary. And if you want to be sure it's thoroughly tested, maybe better wait for official PHP 7.0 support in the CloudFoundry buildpack. I'm sure, they won't wait long onceĀ it's is released.

There's now no excuse anymore to not test your apps against PHP 7.0