v8js

V8Js on GNU/Linux

Installation of V8Js on GNU/Linux is pretty much straight forward.

The biggest hurdle actually is that you need a rather new v8 library. However most distributions still ship the rusty version 3.14, publish years ago, since Node.js requires such an old version.

This means that you usually need to compile v8 on your own before you can start to compile & install v8js itself.

It is recommended to install the V8 version for V8Js off your system's load path, so it doesn't interfere with the V8 library shipped with your system's distribution.

Snapshots

V8 has (optional) support for so-called snapshots which speed up startup performance drastically. Hence they are generally recommended for use.

There are two flavours of snapshots: internal & external.

Internal snapshots are built right into the V8 library (libv8.so file), so there's no need to handle them specially.

Besides there are external snapshots (which are enabled unless configured otherwise). If V8 is compiled with these, then V8Js needs to provide two "binary blobs" to V8, named natives_blob.bin and snapshot_blob.bin. In that case copy those two files to the same directory libv8.so was installed to.

Compile V8 5.6 and newer (using GN)

# Install required dependencies
sudo apt-get install build-essential git python libglib2.0-dev

cd /tmp

# Install depot_tools first (needed for source checkout)
git clone https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/tools/depot_tools.git
export PATH=`pwd`/depot_tools:"$PATH"

# Download v8
fetch v8
cd v8

# (optional) If you'd like to build a certain version:
git checkout 5.6.326.12
gclient sync

# Setup GN
tools/dev/v8gen.py -vv x64.release -- is_component_build=true

# Build
ninja -C out.gn/x64.release/

# Install to /opt/v8/
sudo mkdir -p /opt/v8/{lib,include}
sudo cp out.gn/x64.release/lib*.so out.gn/x64.release/*_blob.bin \
  out.gn/x64.release/icudtl.dat /opt/v8/lib/
sudo cp -R include/* /opt/v8/include/

Compile V8 versions 5.5 and older (using Gyp)

# Install `build-essential` if you haven't already:
sudo apt install build-essential

# Install `chrpath` for fixing libv8.so's RUNPATH header, if you haven't already:
sudo apt install chrpath

cd /tmp

# Install depot_tools first (needed for source checkout)
git clone https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/tools/depot_tools.git
export PATH=`pwd`/depot_tools:"$PATH"

# Download v8
fetch v8
cd v8

# (optional) If you'd like to build a certain version:
git checkout 4.9.385.28
gclient sync

# Build (with internal snapshots)
export GYPFLAGS="-Dv8_use_external_startup_data=0"

# Force gyp to use system-wide ld.gold
export GYPFLAGS="${GYPFLAGS} -Dlinux_use_bundled_gold=0"

# Compile V8 (using up to 8 CPU cores, requires a lot of RAM, adapt as needed)
make native library=shared snapshot=on -j8

# Install to /opt/v8
sudo mkdir -p /opt/v8/{lib,include}
sudo cp out/native/lib.target/lib*.so /opt/v8/lib/
sudo cp -R include/* /opt/v8/include

# Fix libv8.so's RUNPATH header
sudo chrpath -r '$ORIGIN' /opt/v8/lib/libv8.so

# Install libv8_libplatform.a (V8 >= 5.2.51)
echo -e "create /opt/v8/lib/libv8_libplatform.a\naddlib out/native/obj.target/src/libv8_libplatform.a\nsave\nend" | sudo ar -M

# ... same for V8 < 5.2.51, libv8_libplatform.a is built in tools/gyp directory
echo -e "create /opt/v8/lib/libv8_libplatform.a\naddlib out/native/obj.target/tools/gyp/libv8_libplatform.a\nsave\nend" | sudo ar -M

libv8_libplatform.a should not be copied directly since it's a thin archive, i.e. it contains only pointers to the build objects, which otherwise must not be deleted. The simple mri-script converts the thin archive to a normal archive.

Compile php-v8js itself

cd /tmp
git clone https://github.com/phpv8/v8js.git
cd v8js
phpize
./configure --with-v8js=/opt/v8
make
make test
sudo make install

Then add extension=v8js.so to your php.ini file. If you have a separate configuration for CLI, add it there also.

V8Js' build system assumes that the icudtl.dat file is located next to the libv8.so library file and compiles the path into the library itself. If for whatever reason the icudtl.dat file is stored at a different place during runtime, you need to set the php.ini variable v8js.icudtl_dat_path to point to the file. Otherwise locale-aware features of V8 will not work as expected.