Are there any plans about Laravel leaving PHP 5 and going for full PHP 7 support? As a full support, I mean for example using scalar type hints and hinting return values.
And once it goes this way, is it going to use strict mode?
I think this will depend largely on hosting services. Where I come from (Denmark) many, if not all, hosting services are slow at upgrading their servers as the need to make sure their users websites don't fail. It is only recently (within a year) the hosting service I use upgraded some of their server to PHP 5.6, which you specifically needed to request you get moved to.
So to keep compatibility, and making Laravel more accessible for the masses, I don't think a complete update to PHP 7 will hit us anytime soon. That is just my thoughts anyway.
This question doesn't even make sense, who in the world would want to use PHP 7 too quickly? It is always a better idea to stick with a prior version for at least a year or two. But at the same time laravel is PHP 5.9 and php 7 compatible already.
I'm just saying not too wise using PHP 7 in production yet, development is OK.
Laravel 5.3 is going to require PHP 5.6 as minimum, roughly the time when PHP 5.5 will be EOL. So in theory we will require PHP 7 as minimum when PHP 5.6 become EOL.
For 7 to be required we are probably talking a year or two and maybe a Laravel 6 milestone. For 7 to make any impact we would want it to take advantage of all the new goodies like strict type hinting, return types, engine exception catching, etc. That would take a significant amount of work to do.
