We’re happy to announce that the Nix packages of HHVM are now available, as is the public CI status on GitHub Actions for it, and the Visual Studio Code workspace with HHVM dependencies from Nix. The Nix packages can be run on macOS and Linux of any distributions.

Currently, HHVM’s Nix packages are not officially supported, yet. They are provided as is and haven’t been extensively battle-tested. Since we have dropped macOS Homebrew support, it is likely that we will also stop building HHVM with Nix on macOS in the future, too.

How to Install HHVM Built With Nix

For NixOS Users

For NixOS users, add the following settings to /etc/nixos/configuration.nix to configure the binary cache for HHVM:

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  nix.settings.substituters = [ "s3://hhvm-nix-cache?region=us-west-2&endpoint=hhvm-nix-cache.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com" ];
  nix.settings.trusted-substituters = [ "s3://hhvm-nix-cache?region=us-west-2&endpoint=hhvm-nix-cache.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com" ];
  nix.settings.trusted-public-keys = [ "hhvm-nix-cache-1:MvKxscw16fAq6835oG8sbRgTGITb+1xGfYNhs+ee4yo=" ];
  nix.settings.experimental-features = [ "nix-command" "flakes" ];
  environment.systemPackages = [
    pkgs.git # Required to support git+https protocol
  ];

In addition, if you want to build HHVM from source, add the following setting to disable sandboxing because HHVM cannot be built in Nix’s sandboxing build environment.

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  nix.settings.sandbox = false;

Then execute the following shell command to apply the configuration to the system:

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nixos-rebuild switch

Then add HHVM to system packages,

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  environment.systemPackages = [
    (builtins.getFlake "git+https://github.com/facebook/hhvm.git?submodules=1&shallow=1&ref=refs/tags/nightly-2022.07.08").packages.x86_64-linux.default
    pkgs.git
  ];

and apply the configuration, again:

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nixos-rebuild switch

Now hhvm is available.

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hhvm --version

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HipHop VM 4.164.0-dev (rel) (non-lowptr)
Compiler: 1657256394_118415120
Repo schema: 9845ff37f3bb751abbb48e4c823aa5641d5cb453

The above configuration has been tested on NixOS unstable and 22.11. The configuration for older NixOS might be different.

For Linux Users Other Than NixOS

For Linux users other than NixOS, the HHVM Nix package can be installed with the following command if you have a multi-user installation of Nix:

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(
sudo tee -a /etc/nix/nix.conf <<EOF
extra-experimental-features = nix-command flakes
extra-substituters = s3://hhvm-nix-cache?region=us-west-2&endpoint=hhvm-nix-cache.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com
extra-trusted-substituters = s3://hhvm-nix-cache?region=us-west-2&endpoint=hhvm-nix-cache.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com
extra-trusted-public-keys = hhvm-nix-cache-1:MvKxscw16fAq6835oG8sbRgTGITb+1xGfYNhs+ee4yo=
sandbox = false
EOF
) &&
sudo systemctl restart nix-daemon &&
nix profile install 'git+https://github.com/facebook/hhvm.git?submodules=1&shallow=1&ref=refs/tags/nightly-2022.07.08' &&
hhvm --version

Or if you have a single-user installation of Nix:

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(
cat >> ~/.config/nix/nix.conf <<EOF
extra-experimental-features = nix-command flakes
extra-substituters = s3://hhvm-nix-cache?region=us-west-2&endpoint=hhvm-nix-cache.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com
extra-trusted-substituters = s3://hhvm-nix-cache?region=us-west-2&endpoint=hhvm-nix-cache.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com
extra-trusted-public-keys = hhvm-nix-cache-1:MvKxscw16fAq6835oG8sbRgTGITb+1xGfYNhs+ee4yo=
sandbox = false
EOF
) &&
nix profile install 'git+https://github.com/facebook/hhvm.git?submodules=1&shallow=1&ref=refs/tags/nightly-2022.07.08' &&
hhvm --version

The above configuration is tested on Nix 2.9.1. The configuration for older Nix might be different.

For macOS Users

For macOS users, the HHVM Nix package can be installed with the following command if you have a multi-user installation of Nix:

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(
sudo tee -a /etc/nix/nix.conf <<EOF
extra-experimental-features = nix-command flakes
extra-substituters = s3://hhvm-nix-cache?region=us-west-2&endpoint=hhvm-nix-cache.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com
extra-trusted-substituters = s3://hhvm-nix-cache?region=us-west-2&endpoint=hhvm-nix-cache.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com
extra-trusted-public-keys = hhvm-nix-cache-1:MvKxscw16fAq6835oG8sbRgTGITb+1xGfYNhs+ee4yo=
sandbox = false
EOF
) &&
sudo launchctl remove org.nixos.nix-daemon && 
sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.nixos.nix-daemon.plist &&
sleep 3 &&
nix profile install 'git+https://github.com/facebook/hhvm.git?submodules=1&shallow=1&ref=refs/tags/nightly-2022.07.08' &&
hhvm --version

The above configuration is tested on Nix 2.9.1. The configuration for older Nix might be different.

How to Install a Different HHVM Version

The HHVM version to install is specified in the optional ref parameter in the URL, which can be any git branch or tag. For example:

  • To install the latest development version of HHVM
    • nix profile install 'git+https://github.com/facebook/hhvm.git?submodules=1&shallow=1'
  • To install HHVM nightly 2022.07.08
    • nix profile install 'git+https://github.com/facebook/hhvm.git?submodules=1&shallow=1&ref=refs/tags/nightly-2022.07.08'
  • To install HHVM 4.164.0
    • nix profile install 'git+https://github.com/facebook/hhvm.git?submodules=1&shallow=1&ref=refs/tags/HHVM-4.164.0'
  • To install the latest 4.164.* development version of HHVM
    • nix profile install 'git+https://github.com/facebook/hhvm.git?submodules=1&shallow=1&ref=refs/heads/HHVM-4.164'

Since HHVM is built with Nix for new HHVM versions only, the ref parameter must point to a child commit of 21870f6097ac7dea56ea57cc9113bcfd0d1a03d0.

Also note that the binary cache for a git commit would take hours of time to be available. If you are trying to install a recent commit, of which the binary cache is not available yet, Nix will build it from source for you automatically, otherwise Nix will just download the prebuilt binary.

How to Hack on HHVM In A Nix Development Environment

For Visual Studio Code Users

We provide a Visual Studio Code workspace to develop HHVM. To set up the VS Code based HHVM development environment on any Linux or macOS machines:

  1. Install Nix
  2. Checkout HHVM with all submodules: git clone https://github.com/facebook/hhvm.git --depth 1 --recurse-submodules
  3. Open hhvm.code-workspace from Visual Studio Code
  4. Install extension recommendations
  5. Reload Visual Studio Code
  6. Wait for the extensions to be activated. Note that it would take minutes to download dependencies, depending on your network speed.
  7. Click the Build button from the CMake panel in Visual Studio Code

See this instructional video for more detail.

Using Development Containers Or GitHub Codespaces

Alternatively, we also provide a development container with Nix pre-installed, which can be either used in a local Docker engine or in GitHub Codespaces.

See this instructional video for more detail.

Working From The Command Line

To start a clean build HHVM from source:

  1. Install Nix.
  2. Checkout HHVM with all submodules: git clone https://github.com/facebook/hhvm.git --depth 1 --recurse-submodules
  3. Under the work tree, run nix-build

To incrementally edit the source and build HHVM:

  1. Install Nix.
  2. Checkout HHVM with all submodules: git clone https://github.com/facebook/hhvm.git --depth 1 --recurse-submodules
  3. Under the work tree, run nix-shell to enter a development shell. All the HHVM dependencies and development tools will be available in $PATH and other environment variables.
  4. In the development shell, run cmake -C "$CMAKE_INIT_CACHE" -Bbuild to configure HHVM.
  5. In the development shell, run cd build && make to build HHVM.
  6. Make some changes to the source code.
  7. In the development shell, run make to compile the affected files only.

Making Ad-hoc Changes

Feel free to directly edit files in the HHVM repository on GitHub website and create a pull request for ad-hoc changes. We have introduced GitHub Actions to build and test your pull requests with Nix. Just take the advantage from the CI signal and have fun!