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.

Compile latest v8

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 3.32.6
gclient sync

# Build (disable snapshots for V8 > 4.4.9.1)
make native library=shared snapshot=off -j8

# Install to /usr
sudo mkdir -p /usr/lib /usr/include
sudo cp out/native/lib.target/lib*.so /usr/lib/
sudo cp -R include/* /usr/include
echo -e "create /usr/lib/libv8_libplatform.a\naddlib out/native/obj.target/tools/gyp/libv8_libplatform.a\nsave\nend" | sudo ar -M

• If the V8 library is newer than 4.4.9.1 you need to pass snapshot=off to make, otherwise the V8 library will not be usable (see V8 Issue 4192)
• If you don't want to overwrite the system copy of v8, replace /usr in the above commands with some other path like /opt/v8 and then add --with-v8js=/opt/v8 to the php-v8js ./configure command below.
• If you do that with a v8 library of 4.2 branch or newer, then you need to fix the RUNPATH header in the v8js.so library so the libicui18n.so is found. By default it is set to $ORIGIN/lib.target/, however the files lie side by side. Use chrpath -r '$ORIGIN' libv8.so to fix.

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/preillyme/v8js.git
cd v8js
phpize
./configure
make
make test
sudo make install