Bug#727085: Bug#570709: packaging hhvm
>Can Facebook do the fork then?
Sure. How do you want us to fork it? Our current method is pinning to a
tag in their branch and a .patch file.
>Meanwhile I've packaged the latest 1.x
>release with the HHVM patch applied[1]. I need to check if v1.x and
>v2.y can live together though.
>Does FB know that other event libraries are exist as well[2][3]? The
>latter states that it's "a full-featured and high-performance event
>loop that is loosely modelled after libevent, but without its
>limitations and bugs".
We haven¹t put the effort into any other event library. Our web server is
already a pretty small proportion of our request time so inventing time in
it is less impactful than HHVM optimizations.
> But it would be better on the long run. If you stick with version
>1.x, you need to support an obsoleted version. With the 2.x switch,
>you'd get development (possibly performance increase with time) for
>free. Anyway, some weeks ago I've read that FB has its own event
>library, coded in plain C. Even faster a bit than libevent in certain
>workloads. Can't find it now. :( But maybe that would be a better
>dependency for HHVM.
Yes, at some point we will switch our server to us it and open source it.
No ETA on that project though and I¹d rather not gate the packaging of
this on it.
>> I was packaging for Debian 7 but I see it on Debian 8. Should we just
>> target 8?
> Uploads in Debian can go to two 'branches'. The first is Sid, the
>everytime unstable and to experimental. All development happens in
>unstable. Experimental is used for playing and testing with packages
>that may break the system hard. Packages goes to testing after a
>specific time is passed without serious bug reported against it
>(default to ten days). To stable versions (currently version 7.1,
>codenamed Wheezy) only the security team can upload.
Cool, thanks.
>>> I've a working and up-to-date setup of course. I don't know the
>>>problem you refer to. Most of the packages builds inline with the
>>>source files I think. It's the job of '$(MAKE) clean' to delete all
>>>build generated files between rebuilds. It's the time to force an old
>>>and patched version of libevent to my setup and check the build
>>>process of HHVM.
>>
>> Nice! Can you share that with me somehow? I¹d love to see how yours and
>> mine differ. I don¹t want to steal any credit and I¹m more than happy
>>for
>> you to be the packager, I just want to learn.
> The internet is full with howtos on this topic. Keywords are
>debootstrap and/or pbuilder. I can write you specific URLs with
>detailed steps if needed.
>Last time I was very close to compile HHVM, but it still failed with
>some 'this library needs a specific patch' error message as far as I
>can remember.
My main problem is getting the compile to be automatic and clean up
correctly. Starting from your working copy would help me understand the
correct way to do it. I was originally following [4] but then I was told
it was outdated so I¹m fighting through another version.
[4] https://github.com/facebook/hhvm/wiki/Build-Packages-for-Debian
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