VIvickodin·Feb 16, 2026Submission
Varnish HTTP Cache: The last usable commit on GitHub
9 points · Open discussionvarnishcache
varnish-cache
C2017–2026
varnishcache / varnish-cache · Archived
varnish-cache
Varnish Cache source code repository
7Distinct people
7Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
4KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Varnish Cache source code repository
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 1:49:46 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year7 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2017-02-12 00:22:10 UTC to 2026-02-16 06:26:15 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
What Hacker News says
7 sourcesA handful of C projects I have seen use magic numbers in allocated structs to prevent use-after-free and other memory bugs[0]. Basically, in this case, when the ref count hits zero and the struct is freed, the magic is zeroed and any further access will be stopped. The author makes no reference of this, so I guess this isn’t a widespread safety pattern?
[0] https://github.com/varnishcache/varnish-cache/blob/4ae73a5b1...
In Simple Linux kernel memory corruption bug can lead to complete system compromise> So that looks like a stock Varnish 503
Looks like it, except that Varnish has it spelled “Guru Meditation”, not “Guru Mediation”. Anyone know why that would be?
https://github.com/varnishcache/varnish-cache/search?q=medit...
In What the Fastly outage can teach us about writing error messagesDoes not seem like: https://github.com/varnishcache/varnish-cache/blob/606977bbf...
In Fastly OutageNice! Here are the links:
Varnish --> https://github.com/varnishcache/varnish-cache
Linux Kernel --> https://github.com/torvalds/linux
In To become a good C programmer (2011)Another huge load of BS. What is your goal here?
> epoll/kqueue
Here is the implementation from 2.1, back maybe around 10 years ago:
https://github.com/varnishcache/varnish-cache/blob/2.1/bin/v...
https://github.com/varnishcache/varnish-cache/blob/2.1/bin/v...
> nginx thread model
https://www.nginx.com/blog/thread-pools-boost-performance-9x...
> With sendfile(2) and splice(2) you are only wiring up the activity to be done in your event loop
Why you are storing your cache on disk into individual files when its "2018 and RAM is commonly measured in many hundred GB" is beyond me. But its not even worth discussing because you will just introduce more BS, FUD, and techno babble.
In Varnish Cache 6.0.0I'm only familiar with varnish 2.1, but as to that version I think it's a bit of a stretch to say varnish is well written. VCL is very complicated - just check the request flow diagram [1]. Some of the documentation is very poor - try to find out the properties available on beresp for example (you have to grep the source code [2]), or try to understand the precise function and implications of grace mode, saint mode, or hit_for_pass. The best redeeming quality is varnishtest and some of the other tools that are provided.
[1] http://book.varnish-software.com/3.0/_images/request.png
[2] https://github.com/varnishcache/varnish-cache/blob/2.1/lib/l...
In Ask HN: What are some well written/engineered open source software?