HHVM 4.20 is released! This release marks the end of support for 4.14; 4.15-4.19 remain supported, as do the LTS releases 3.30 and 4.8.

HHVM 4.20.1 was released to fix a build issue related to the new Rust parser on Mac OS X. All Linux builds for 4.20.1 are identical to 4.20.0.

Highlights

  • We are rewriting parts of our code from OCaml to Rust. This should not cause any user-facing changes. The 4.20 release adds a new parser written in Rust, which you can test by adding hack.lang.hack_compiler_use_rust_parser=1 to hhvm.ini. If you see any differences in behavior or other issues, please open a GitHub issue.
  • A new command hh_client --rewrite-return-type <filename> is now available to help with migration from partial to strict mode. It adds <<__Soft>> type annotations based on inferred return types.
  • Invalid method calls on reified generic types now throw a BadMethodCallException instead of causing a fatal error.
  • A new function fb_intercept2() was added as a replacement for fb_intercept().
  • A new function fun_get_function() was added.

Breaking Changes

  • HH_FIXME[4110] has been replaced with several new, more specific error codes. HHAST 4.15.2 provides an automated migration: hhast-migrate --migrate-fixme-4110 <path> (this migration adds the new FIXMEs without removing the old ones - after upgrading to HHVM 4.20, the old FIXMEs can be removed with hh_client --remove-dead-fixmes). The Hack Standard Library and other Hack libraries all provide a new release that works on both HHVM 4.20 and previous HHVM versions.
  • Using attributes on variadic arguments (<<Attrib>> ...$arg) is now a parser error.
  • We are no longer building packages for Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty Tahr).

Future changes

  • In HHVM 4.21, the new Rust parser will be enabled by default (with the option to opt-out).
  • In HHVM 4.22, the old parser will be removed and the Rust parser will become the only one available.
  • Using unset() on a class constant will soon be a parser error (previously, such calls did nothing). You can enable this behavior now by adding disable_unset_class_const=true to .hhconfig.
  • Calling class_meth() with arguments that are not string literals will soon trigger a runtime warning (it is already a typechecker error). You can enable this behavior now by running HHVM with -vEval.EmitFuncPointers=1 -vEval.EmitClsMethPointers=1 -vEval.WarnOnNonLiteralClsMeth=1