.hdf config cleanup and improvements

[dol]

The .deb and .rpm packages both contain the following *.hdf files.

./hhvm/deb/skeleton/etc/hhvm/server.hdf
./hhvm/deb/skeleton/etc/hhvm/config.hdf
./hhvm/rpm/fedora20/root/etc/hhvm/server.hdf
./hhvm/rpm/fedora20/root/etc/hhvm/config.hdf

As I can see, config.hdf is not used in any case. Vote for a remove.
Is this file internally used somehow?

Further improvements:
According to issue #8 it might make sense to provide a separate config file for the FastCGI package.
My proposal:

• server.hdf for the server mode
• fastcgi.hdf for the FastCGI mode

At the moment it's IMHO not a good solution that the hhvm server and the FastCGI progress share the same config file. E.g. same .hdf means same port, which can cause problems.
If the server and FastCGI config diverge to much, it's kind impossible to find a common ground with only one file.
Note: To run hhvm server and FastCGI at the same time is a corner case.

An other issue of not having separate files is, that it's not upgrade save. https://wiki.debian.org/PackageConfigUpgrade

[ptarjan]

config.hdf is used by default when no config is specified.

Soon, we will stop shipping the HTTP server and only ship fastcgi. At that time, I think we should merge the two packages and only have server.hdf.

My current plan is to do that for 2.5.0.

Because of that, I don't think we should make a fastcgi.hdf and should just rely on overrides until then. How does that sound?

[dol]

Soon, we will stop shipping the HTTP server and only ship fastcgi. At that time, I think we should merge the two packages and only have server.hdf.

I ❤️ the solution of only shipping a FastCGI package.

config.hdf is used by default when no config is specified.

Ok. I thought I might be the default config file.

With this questions cleared and some additional thoughts, I have another suggestion.
The current use case of hhvm executable is:

• Built-in HTTP server (removed in the future)
• FastCGI service
• CLI (e.g. unit tests)

The two use cases FastCGI and CLI need IMHO their own config file. This will introduce the following requirements:

• Base package that ships hhvm executable, basic config file, man pages and basic folder structure (like php5-common)
• FastCGI package with init.d script and config file
• CLI package with config file

I'm guided by the PHP packages from Debian/Ubuntu.

• php5-common
• [php5-fpm](http://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/amd64/php5-fpm/filelist] %28not quite the same as hhvm FastCGI, because it ships it own executable)
• php5-cli

I may open an other issue to start the discussion of having a 'hhvm-common' package.

UPDATE:
The PHP example is not the best example. php5-common ships no executable.
Better example:
The Apache server is split into different packages like apache2-bin (contains /usr/sbin/apache2). The same applies to Nginx on Ubuntu.

• hhvm-bin
• hhvm-fastcgi
• hhvm-cli

[ptarjan]

I really like the idea of people installing hhvm and getting everything they need. Would that be an umbrella package?

I don't know how involved in the debian ecosystem but there is some discussion going on at http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=727085 . Sadly nothing technical yet, but there are 2 people interested in helping, so if you know either of them I would talk to them.

[dol]

I really like the idea of people installing hhvm and getting everything they need. Would that be an umbrella package?

I agree that having a so called 'metapackage' would be the good solution.

I don't know how involved in the debian ecosystem but there is some discussion going on at http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=727085 . Sadly nothing technical yet, but there are 2 people interested in helping, so if you know either of them I would talk to them.

Thank your for the hint. I don't know either one. I'll process the conversation and possibly get involved in the discussion.

[ptarjan]

For your package list, I'm not really sure what hhvm-bin and hhvm-cli differ on? Also, does hhvm-fastcgi still inject itself into your nginx and apache configs?

If hhvm-bin and hhvm-cli are the same, then aren't we back at the status quo? I guess they would be named hhvm-cli instead of just hhvm but I don't see what having the metapackage depend on that buys us.

[ptarjan]

We've moving to INI settings. And I rolled the fastcgi package into the main hhvm package since we deprecated the main webserver.

All of that means this work isn't needed. Yay.

[dol]

I agree. Wise move. 👍