Hello cf-dev,

*TL;DR*: The Cloud Foundry Buildpacks team is discussing whether, and
how, to continue support for HHVM support in the php-buildpack.

*Actions*: If you're a PHP developer, please fill out a short
four-question survey to help us determine what level of support the
community needs for HHVM.

*Please click through to the anonymous survey here:*


https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1WBupympWFRMQnoGZAgQLKmUZugreVldj3xDhyn9kpWM/viewform?usp=send_form

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*Context*

The PHP buildpack, in v4.0.0 and later, supports PHP 5.4, 5.5, and 5.6 as
well as HHVM 3.5 and 3.6.

HHVM currently presents a challenge in that it depends on many packages
that are not present in the rootfs. The tooling we're using now downloads a
handful of .deb packages as part of the HHVM compilation process and
packages them in the buildpack with the compiled binary.

This, of course, opens HHVM users up to potentially needing to update a
buildpack to address security vulnerabilities and bugs that could normally
be easily addressed with a rootfs update. And maybe that's OK, but it's a
notable deviation from how we generally the binaries we vendor into the CF
buildpacks.

One possible solution is to add all the packages necessary to run HHVM to
the rootfs, which would include libboost as well as the other libraries
enumerated here:

https://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/99169476

In order to really understand the tradeoffs, it's necessary to understand
whether, and how, HHVM is being used by the CF community.


This is related to a broader conversation around customization and
modification of rootfses, but for now I'd like to focus on the specific
question of whether HHVM support is valuable enough to continue.

Thanks for reading, and *once again, the survey link is here*:


https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1WBupympWFRMQnoGZAgQLKmUZugreVldj3xDhyn9kpWM/viewform?usp=send_form

Cheers,

-mike