PHP 8.0 error_reporting default shift: balancing production alert signal against log noise

Context

Since PHP 8.0 the engine defaults error_reporting to E_ALL (32767) instead of the quieter E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE & ~E_STRICT & ~E_DEPRECATED (22527) used through PHP 7.4. The change is documented in the 8.0 migration guide but comes without a prescribed production baseline.

Goal and constraints

Teams upgrading legacy codebases or running raw PHP scripts in containers need a single error_reporting value that surfaces actionable problems — undefined variables, deprecated library calls — while keeping log aggregators from drowning in notice-level chatter. Frameworks such as Laravel and Symfony set their own level at bootstrap, yet early-boot errors and non-framework entry points still inherit the engine default. Shared hosting and read-only filesystem environments may block php.ini overrides, forcing reliance on ini_set() which misses startup diagnostics. Lowering the level too aggressively risks hiding genuine bugs; leaving it at E_ALL floods stdout/syslog in containerized deployments.

Open questions

• What error_reporting bitmask do you consider the pragmatic production default for PHP 8.0–8.3, and how do you justify the excluded categories?
• How do you enforce that value consistently across CLI, FPM, and one-off scripts without relying on a writable php.ini?
• Which monitoring signals (log volume, error rate, specific severity spikes) do you track to validate that the chosen level is neither too noisy nor too silent?