Bring own FFI Binding for llhttp instead of using http-parser

[Jcambass]

Hi there, I know there has been talk about dropping http-parser because of it's somewhat staled maintenance state. As I commented on this issue, we experienced segfaults with ruby 2.7 which forced us to dig a bit into the library and dependencies. One issue has already been fixed in ffi and the requirements have been bumped on http-parser, however we still see segfaults even with this new version.

I would love to bring http-parser back to life but even the node community seams to have given up on it:

http-parser is not actively maintained. New projects and projects looking to migrate should consider llhttp.

As stated on the llhttp repository:

Let's face it, http_parser is practically unmaintainable. Even introduction of a single new method results in a significant code churn.

Instead of continuing flogging a dead horse, we should probably invest into taking another route. One possible option would be to create a new ffi binding for llhttp. From a quick search I even found a quite recent gem that implements ruby bindings for llhttp, maybe this could be a good candidate to use in the future.

I'm sure that we can come up with some resources to work on this, but I would love to hear your opinion on this topic.

[tarcieri]

I agree this has been an ongoing problem. If someone would like to prototype switching to a maintained alternative, that's certainly something we can consider.

[sandstrom]

Maybe it would be possible to collaborate with e.g. excon or some of the other ruby http libraries on a shared http parser?

[tarcieri]

llparser is probably the most promising way forward here. See #639.

As for FFI, it looks like @bryanp has suggested it's possible to support with llhttp: bryanp/llhttp#4

[bryanp]

Yes, it's possible. I need to find a couple of hours to finish the dual-implementation approach summarized here: bryanp/llhttp#4 (comment). Hoping to get to that in the next couple of weeks.

[bryanp]

It took a bit longer to get to, but llhttp-ffi is published. Read more here: #639 (comment)

[ixti]

Thanks @bryanp!