Regarding my previous comment as to the change in scope of declare(ticks=1) between 5.6 and 7.x, I intended to mention another example of the affect this can have on signal handlers:
If your script uses declare(ticks=1) and assigns handlers, in 5.6 signals will get caught and call the handler even when the code that is running is in an included file (where the included file doesn't have the declaration). However in 7.x the signal wouldn't get caught until the code returns to the main script.
The best solution to that is to use pcntl_async_signals(true) when it's available, which will allow the signals to get caught regardless of what file the code happens to be in.