HHVM 4.51 is released! This release marks the end of support for 4.45; HHVM 4.46–4.50 remain supported, as do the 4.8 and 4.32 LTS releases.

Highlights

  • A new method getEnumUnderlyingType() was added to ReflectionClass. It returns the underlying type of the enum’s values (usually HH\int or HH\string, but can also be the name of another enum, type alias, or HH\arraykey).
    • If the ReflectionClass instance doesn’t represent an enum, the method throws.
  • Improved optimization of async tail calls (return await ...) can significantly improve performance of code that uses a lot of such calls.

Breaking Changes

  • Using the array-appending operator [] on a Map object ($map[] = Pair {$key, $value};) is now a type-checker error.
    • Use $map[$key] = $value; instead.
    • The runtime still allows both variants, so HH_FIXME can be used temporarily, to help migrating code. Runtime support will likely be removed in a future release.
  • The type-checker no longer supports the “magic method” __call, so calling any method that is not explicitly declared is now a type-checker error.
    • Runtime behavior is unchanged, so HH_FIXME can be used temporarily, to help migrating code. Runtime support will likely be removed in a future release.
    • In the long term, we recommend migrating any affected code to only call explicitly declared methods.

Future Changes

  • We expect the removed type-checker features listed above to also be removed from the runtime in a future release.