Squirrelmail returns blank page after send (PHP 7: Warning: contains logs )

OS              NetBSD 7.0_STABLE
Software Stack  PkgSrc
SquirrelMail    1.4.23pre14605
Apache 2        Apache/2.2.31 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.31 OpenSSL/1.0.1u DAV/2 
PHP/7.0.13
PHP             7.0.135.6.28-1


Before I start, a bit of info on the SquirrelMail version, because I
was told that we are reasonably up-to-date, in that the PkgSrc commit
says:

----------------------------
revision 1.131
date: 2016-11-18 04:10:07 +1300;  author: taca;  state: Exp;  lines: +2
-3;  commitid: TckPzUpbAFssFuuz;
Update squirrelmail to 1.4.23pre14605, latest snapshot.
PHP 7.0 support should be improved, too.

   - Added new "smtp_helo_override" hook; allows plugins to override
     the HELO host sent to the SMTP server when sending messages
   - Added STARTTLS support for both IMAP and SMTP connections
   - Added PDO support for database connections, so no external
     database module needs to be installed
----------------------------

furthermore, I also note that this issue echoes that described in
this (Dec 2016) devel list posting

    - https://sourceforge.net/p/squirrelmail/mailman/message/35527151/

except that ours

1) is only using a secure (https) connection
2) exhibits the "blank page" but DOESN'T send a message.
3) is using PHP7, not the PHP5.

but here we go with the actual issue.

Our School's webservers updated to PHP7 over the weekend and one of the
issues in the wake of that has been that SquirrelMail works to a degree
(we're a Uni, but no pun intended) but no longer seems to be able to
send out mail, either when doing a "Compose" or a reply to.

The webserver logs tell us that, following a click on the "Send" button
we're falling foul of these four routines

squirrelmail/class/html.class.php
squirrelmail/class/mime/Disposition.class.php
squirrelmail/class/mime/Language.class.php
squirrelmail/class/mime/ContentType.class.php

which give error (not warning) messages akin to

PHP Deprecated:  Methods with the same name as their class will not be
  constructors in a future version of PHP;

although that might not be the whole story as some parts of SquirrelMail
clearly still work.

I tried adding in "proper" __constructor functions, in the manner of the
fix described here

    - https://cweiske.de/tagebuch/php4-constructors-php7.htm

to those four files, however that just moves the same issue down into
(or possibly across) the SquirrelMail stack, and we see some other
webserver error logs, three indicating similar "deprecated constructor"
stuff from different fucntions:

squirrelmail/functions/addressbook.php
squirrelmail/functions/abook_local_file.php
squirrelmail/functions/abook_ldap_server.php

however, two more exhibit different errors

PHP Deprecated:  Non-static method Message::parseStructure() should not 
be called statically in

squirrelmail/functions/mime.php  on line 36,
squirrelmail/class/mime/Message.class.php on line 296,

both with the same referrer

referer: 
https://our.host/squirrelmail/src/right_main.php?PG_SHOWALL=0&sort=0&startMessage=1&mailbox=INBOX


Reading around the interweb thing, especially this posting in the
squirrelmail-devel list

    - https://sourceforge.net/p/squirrelmail/mailman/message/35457393/

suggests that there's a snapshot version out there in which all this may 
have been
fixed ?

What I'd like to know is whether there is an identifiable set of patches
that I could use, so to to patch the PkgSrc version of SquirrelMail, rather
than go straight to a /newer/the most recent/ snapshot version that will
have extra (or even reduced) functionality, which the PkgSrc folk clearly
decided wasn't the way forwards for them.

I suppose what I am asking is, did you do the PHP7 updates in an SVN branch
that I could take the top off, rather than taking the most recent branch and
extracting out only the "solution" to the "deprecated" errors ?

I also suppose that the errors we're seeing could be something else 
altogether!

Either way, and it pretty much covers most "ways", any insight would be 
useful,

Kevin Buckley
eScience Consultant
School of Engineering and Computer Science
Victoria University of Wellington
New Zealand

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