New extensions, Composer updates, smaller builds for PHP applications

Change effective on 10 March 2016

PHP applications on Heroku may now use the following new or updated extensions:

  • ext-event (version 2.0.0)
  • ext-gmp (bundled with PHP)
  • ext-imagick (version 3.4.1)
  • ext-ldap (bundled with PHP; includes SASL support)
  • ext-mongodb (version 1.1.3)
  • ext-newrelic (version 6.0.1; auto-installed if the New Relic add-on is detected)

The ext_apcu extension for PHP 7 now includes the apcu_bc compatibility module, providing an ext-apc compatibility layer for older software.

The Composer version used for builds and at runtime is now 1.0.0-beta1.

The builds for runtimes, extensions, web servers and libraries have been heavily optimized for reduced size, resulting in faster builds and boots due to significantly (~85%) smaller slugs.

Any platform packages listed in a project’s root composer.json’s provide, replace or conflict sections are now ignored when resolving what platform packages to install.