The next HHVM release, 3.6, is on the horizon. We expect it to be released at the very end of February or in early March. It’s going to be a big release. Not only will it be our second release with long-term support, but it will contain several exciting new features – and lay the groundwork for continued development later this year.

New features in 3.6:

Update 2015-02-18: if you can’t wait for the 3.6 official release, the above features are now available in any prebuilt nightly package dated 2015-02-18 or later.

But what’s coming out soon is only part of the story. The 3.6 release lays the groundwork for even more impressive components, which will let us continue making HHVM a highly performant, feature-rich PHP runtime.

HHVM roadmap for 2015:

Integration of LLVM as a further optimization step to make the hottest code run even faster on HHVM.

Continued experiments with support for 64-bit ARM platforms to increase deployment options for HHVM.

Improvements to the garbage-collection scheme for HHVM. This will start with collecting cyclic references and move into experiments with a full mark-and-sweep garbage collector, built on top of a pluggable GC interface.

Other general memory usage improvements, including investigation into several longstanding memory and stability issues.

First-class OS X support.

Even tighter integration of the Hack typechecker with HHVM, leading to an even easier experience getting started with and using Hack.

Full support for all configuration options in INI files (most are already supported), killing the HHVM-specific HDF files.

Releasing the 100% Hack XHP 2.0 library.

Continued compatibility fixes to make even more existing PHP code work without modification on HHVM.

So 3.6 will be an exciting release, and 2015 is shaping up to be an exciting year! As always, contributions of any kind are extremely welcome – whether they be questions, suggestions, bug reports, or code – and will always be viewed constructively. Check out the links in the sidebar to the right to get involved!

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