Proposal: Abandon v8 package

[Tom Callaway]

Background:

I made the original v8 Fedora package many moons ago, when I was more
optimistic about the possibility of separating the useful components
inside of chromium. Since that point, it has become clear that while v8
is useful software, the following facts are also true:

1. The v8 upstream is entirely disinterested in the concept of
maintaining any sort of ABI/API consistency between releases.
2. The v8 that is used in chromium is not necessarily compatible with
the upstream v8, as they have a history of picking and choosing code
changes (and even applying chromium specific changes locally).
3. Virtually all consumers of v8 (including chromium) take a git
checkout (not a specific one, just whatever they decided to code to) and
use that revision, often creating a local fork of v8 from that revision,
as they are either unwilling or unable to track v8 upstream.
4. Since v8 has no concept of a "stable" release that I can see, they
simply do security fixes to the master branch, which, combined with the
code changing violently, makes it very difficult to backport security fixes.

This means that other than plv8 (which is currently unable to build
against the current v8 package in Fedora), I do not see any consumers of
the Fedora v8 package (chromium has long since abandoned any possibility
of using it). It does contain a "d8" binary, which is a javascript CLI
debugger, but it is not clear to me that this is widely used, or that
the benefit of its inclusion in Fedora outweighs the pain of maintaining
this package.

Thus, I propose that the v8 package be abandoned/orphaned/taken to the
farm upstate to run and play with the other dogs.

If you disagree, or are crazy enough to want to take it over, speak now.

~tom

P.S. I'll still maintain v8-314 as best I can, since there are actually
users of that. The irony of that really ancient version being considered
stable (and thus, used by other software) as a result of Fedora sticking
on that version of v8 for so many releases is not lost on me.

[Stephen Gallagher]

On Mon, Jun 11, 2018 at 10:43 AM Tom Callaway <tcallawa(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:

>  Background:
>
>  I made the original v8 Fedora package many moons ago, when I was more
>  optimistic about the possibility of separating the useful components
>  inside of chromium. Since that point, it has become clear that while v8
>  is useful software, the following facts are also true:
>
>  1. The v8 upstream is entirely disinterested in the concept of
>  maintaining any sort of ABI/API consistency between releases.
>  2. The v8 that is used in chromium is not necessarily compatible with
>  the upstream v8, as they have a history of picking and choosing code
>  changes (and even applying chromium specific changes locally).
>  3. Virtually all consumers of v8 (including chromium) take a git
>  checkout (not a specific one, just whatever they decided to code to) and
>  use that revision, often creating a local fork of v8 from that revision,
>  as they are either unwilling or unable to track v8 upstream.
>  4. Since v8 has no concept of a "stable" release that I can see, they
>  simply do security fixes to the master branch, which, combined with the
>  code changing violently, makes it very difficult to backport security
>  fixes.
>  

For all of these same reasons, the Node.js SIG opted to carry a bundled
copy of v8 in that package as well. I think we should move to have v8
considered to be a copylib for all reasonable purposes within Fedora.

[Elliott Sales de Andrade]

Hi,

Sorry for resurrecting a long-dead thread, but a few things happened recently:
1. v8 was just retired last week or so,
2. R-V8 just ported itself from v8-314 to v8 LTS 6/7.

Currently, R-V8 supports both v8-314 and v8, but as the latter fixes several downstream
package issues, it is the recommended build target. I expect that eventually they will
stop supporting 314 as well. This leaves me in a bit of a pickle as it does not bundle v8
and neither I nor upstream have any plans to build it ourselves.

>  For all of these same reasons, the Node.js SIG opted to carry a
> bundled
>  copy of v8 in that package as well. I think we should move to have v8
>  considered to be a copylib for all reasonable purposes within Fedora. 
In Debian, the nodejs package provides a stable *shared* v8 library, and the recommended
install is against libnode-dev. Unfortunately, in Fedora, while nodejs-devel provides
v8.h, it does *not* provide any shared library.

Is this something we can also do in Fedora, i.e., split out a nodejs-libs subpackage, or
similar?

[Elliott Sales de Andrade]

Let's try this again, but CC'ing the package owners.

On 2019-02-17 9:12 p.m., Elliott Sales de Andrade wrote:
>  Hi,
>  
>  Sorry for resurrecting a long-dead thread, but a few things happened recently:
>  1. v8 was just retired last week or so,
>  2. R-V8 just ported itself from v8-314 to v8 LTS 6/7.
>  
>  Currently, R-V8 supports both v8-314 and v8, but as the latter fixes several downstream
> package issues, it is the recommended build target. I expect that eventually they will
> stop supporting 314 as well. This leaves me in a bit of a pickle as it does not bundle v8
> and neither I nor upstream have any plans to build it ourselves.
>  
> > For all of these same reasons, the Node.js SIG opted to carry a bundled
> > copy of v8 in that package as well. I think we should move to have v8
> > considered to be a copylib for all reasonable purposes within Fedora.
>  
>  In Debian, the nodejs package provides a stable *shared* v8 library, and the recommended
> install is against libnode-dev. Unfortunately, in Fedora, while nodejs-devel provides
> v8.h, it does *not* provide any shared library.
>  
>  Is this something we can also do in Fedora, i.e., split out a nodejs-libs subpackage, or
> similar?
>   
--
Elliott

[Stephen Gallagher]

On Wed, Feb 27, 2019 at 7:02 PM Elliott Sales de Andrade
<quantum.analyst(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  Let's try this again, but CC'ing the package owners.
>
>  On 2019-02-17 9:12 p.m., Elliott Sales de Andrade wrote:
>  > Hi,
>  >
>  > Sorry for resurrecting a long-dead thread, but a few things happened recently:
>  > 1. v8 was just retired last week or so,
>  > 2. R-V8 just ported itself from v8-314 to v8 LTS 6/7.
>  >
>  > Currently, R-V8 supports both v8-314 and v8, but as the latter fixes several
> downstream package issues, it is the recommended build target. I expect that eventually
> they will stop supporting 314 as well. This leaves me in a bit of a pickle as it does not
> bundle v8 and neither I nor upstream have any plans to build it ourselves.
>  >
>  >> For all of these same reasons, the Node.js SIG opted to carry a bundled
>  >> copy of v8 in that package as well. I think we should move to have v8
>  >> considered to be a copylib for all reasonable purposes within Fedora.
>  >
>  > In Debian, the nodejs package provides a stable *shared* v8 library, and the
> recommended install is against libnode-dev. Unfortunately, in Fedora, while nodejs-devel
> provides v8.h, it does *not* provide any shared library.
>  >
>  > Is this something we can also do in Fedora, i.e., split out a nodejs-libs
> subpackage, or similar?
>  > 

I've been keeping the Node.js packages in Fedora alive, but on
life-support, for a couple years now. I don't have the cycles to look
into a significant rework of how they're designed. If you have ideas
for how to do what you're asking, I will happily review a pull request
to http://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/nodejs

[Elliott Sales de Andrade]

On Thu, 28 Feb 2019 at 16:24, Stephen Gallagher <sgallagh(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
>  On Wed, Feb 27, 2019 at 7:02 PM Elliott Sales de Andrade
>  <quantum.analyst(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  >
>  > Let's try this again, but CC'ing the package owners.
>  >
>  > On 2019-02-17 9:12 p.m., Elliott Sales de Andrade wrote:
>  > > Hi,
>  > >
>  > > Sorry for resurrecting a long-dead thread, but a few things happened recently:
>  > > 1. v8 was just retired last week or so,
>  > > 2. R-V8 just ported itself from v8-314 to v8 LTS 6/7.
>  > >
>  > > Currently, R-V8 supports both v8-314 and v8, but as the latter fixes several
> downstream package issues, it is the recommended build target. I expect that eventually
> they will stop supporting 314 as well. This leaves me in a bit of a pickle as it does not
> bundle v8 and neither I nor upstream have any plans to build it ourselves.
>  > >
>  > >> For all of these same reasons, the Node.js SIG opted to carry a bundled
>  > >> copy of v8 in that package as well. I think we should move to have v8
>  > >> considered to be a copylib for all reasonable purposes within Fedora.
>  > >
>  > > In Debian, the nodejs package provides a stable *shared* v8 library, and the
> recommended install is against libnode-dev. Unfortunately, in Fedora, while nodejs-devel
> provides v8.h, it does *not* provide any shared library.
>  > >
>  > > Is this something we can also do in Fedora, i.e., split out a nodejs-libs
> subpackage, or similar?
>  > >
>
>
>  I've been keeping the Node.js packages in Fedora alive, but on
>  life-support, for a couple years now. I don't have the cycles to look
>  into a significant rework of how they're designed. If you have ideas
>  for how to do what you're asking, I will happily review a pull request
>  to http://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/nodejs 
OK, I've sent a pull-request to do so [1]. It essentially mimics what
the Debian package does (pass --shared and then manually install the
executable since their script will only install one or the other.) The
other changes just make sure paths are correct for tests to work. It
works for me [2] to build R-V8 (though copr gets stuck building nodejs
on x86_64 for some reason.)

[1] https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/nodejs/pull-request/4
[2] https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/qulogic/nodejs-R-V8/builds/

-- 
Elliott

[Stephen Gallagher]

Great, thanks. I took a look and did a review. I have a couple minor
tweaks I'd like to see, then I'll go ahead and merge it (and
backport/sideport it to the 8.x and 11.x branches)

On Thu, Mar 7, 2019 at 6:44 AM Elliott Sales de Andrade
<quantum.analyst(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>
> On Thu, 28 Feb 2019 at 16:24, Stephen Gallagher <sgallagh(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, Feb 27, 2019 at 7:02 PM Elliott Sales de Andrade
> > <quantum.analyst(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
> > >
> > > Let's try this again, but CC'ing the package owners.
> > >
> > > On 2019-02-17 9:12 p.m., Elliott Sales de Andrade wrote:
> > > > Hi,
> > > >
> > > > Sorry for resurrecting a long-dead thread, but a few things happened
recently:
> > > > 1. v8 was just retired last week or so,
> > > > 2. R-V8 just ported itself from v8-314 to v8 LTS 6/7.
> > > >
> > > > Currently, R-V8 supports both v8-314 and v8, but as the latter fixes
several downstream package issues, it is the recommended build target. I expect that
eventually they will stop supporting 314 as well. This leaves me in a bit of a pickle as
it does not bundle v8 and neither I nor upstream have any plans to build it ourselves.
> > > >
> > > >> For all of these same reasons, the Node.js SIG opted to carry a
bundled
> > > >> copy of v8 in that package as well. I think we should move to have
v8
> > > >> considered to be a copylib for all reasonable purposes within
Fedora.
> > > >
> > > > In Debian, the nodejs package provides a stable *shared* v8 library,
and the recommended install is against libnode-dev. Unfortunately, in Fedora, while
nodejs-devel provides v8.h, it does *not* provide any shared library.
> > > >
> > > > Is this something we can also do in Fedora, i.e., split out a
nodejs-libs subpackage, or similar?
> > > >
> >
> >
> > I've been keeping the Node.js packages in Fedora alive, but on
> > life-support, for a couple years now. I don't have the cycles to look
> > into a significant rework of how they're designed. If you have ideas
> > for how to do what you're asking, I will happily review a pull request
> > to http://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/nodejs
>
> OK, I've sent a pull-request to do so [1]. It essentially mimics what
> the Debian package does (pass --shared and then manually install the
> executable since their script will only install one or the other.) The
> other changes just make sure paths are correct for tests to work. It
> works for me [2] to build R-V8 (though copr gets stuck building nodejs
> on x86_64 for some reason.)
>
> [1] https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/nodejs/pull-request/4
> [2] https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/qulogic/nodejs-R-V8/builds/
>
> --
> Elliott

[Eamon Walsh]

On 6/11/2018 10:42 AM, Tom Callaway wrote:
>  Background:
>
>  I made the original v8 Fedora package many moons ago, when I was more
>  optimistic about the possibility of separating the useful components
>  inside of chromium. Since that point, it has become clear that while v8
>  is useful software, the following facts are also true:
>
>  1. The v8 upstream is entirely disinterested in the concept of
>  maintaining any sort of ABI/API consistency between releases.
>  2. The v8 that is used in chromium is not necessarily compatible with
>  the upstream v8, as they have a history of picking and choosing code
>  changes (and even applying chromium specific changes locally).
>  3. Virtually all consumers of v8 (including chromium) take a git
>  checkout (not a specific one, just whatever they decided to code to) and
>  use that revision, often creating a local fork of v8 from that revision,
>  as they are either unwilling or unable to track v8 upstream.
>  4. Since v8 has no concept of a "stable" release that I can see, they
>  simply do security fixes to the master branch, which, combined with the
>  code changing violently, makes it very difficult to backport security fixes.
>
>  This means that other than plv8 (which is currently unable to build
>  against the current v8 package in Fedora), I do not see any consumers of
>  the Fedora v8 package (chromium has long since abandoned any possibility
>  of using it). It does contain a "d8" binary, which is a javascript CLI
>  debugger, but it is not clear to me that this is widely used, or that
>  the benefit of its inclusion in Fedora outweighs the pain of maintaining
>  this package. 

My packages in COPR depend on libv8 but I can just bundle it so it's not
a problem. Thanks for maintaining it to this point.


-- 
Eamon Walsh
https://termysequence.io