you can download deps using https://github.com/OSTC/php-sdk-binary-tools and the phpsdk_deps command

> you can download deps using
> https://github.com/OSTC/php-sdk-binary-tools and the phpsdk_deps
> command

It seems to me that this is only for PHP core depencies, i.e.
for what is available via
<http://windows.php.net/downloads/php-sdk/deps/>.

Thanks for the ping, Christoph. The vc15 runtime is binary compatible to vc14, here is more info https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2017/03/07/binary-compatibility-and-pain-free-upgrade-why-moving-to-visual-studio-2017-is-almost-too-easy/ . Since we never link the runtime statically, neither for the core nor elsewhere, using vc14 binaries should be ok in most case.

ATM the prepared PECL snapshots against 7.2 betas use these vc14 deps, while for the core the clean vc15 rebuilds are in place. I was planning some dep rebuilds for PECL, but didn't see it critical as there is the binary compatibility promise allowing to save the rebuild effort for now. There still could be linker issues, which are a different topic. I'd suggest you to take the vc14 PECL bins for both vc14 and vc15 builds, if there are issues - clean vc15 builds can be done. 

Thanks.

> The vc15 runtime is binary compatible to vc14, […]

Thanks, Anatol, I wasn't aware of this. And indeed, I've just
built the full test suite of external libgd with VC 15 using the
VC14 dependencies (x64 and x86), and everything is working fine.

Ok, good to know. In fact, we've used vc14 deps for some time already with master before the 7.2 pre cycle start, also without issues. I'm closing this for now. If some vc14 dependency produces issues for PECL, it still can be rebuilt. But otherwise I'd probably defer it as long as possible, so there's more time for other topical things.

Thanks.