We need to be sure that you can save a dataset in a Redis instance,
reload it in a different architecture, and continue to count in the same
HyperLogLog structure.
So 32 and 64 bit, little or bit endian, must all guarantee to output the
same hash for the same element.
The new representation is more obvious, starting from the LSB of the
first byte and using bits going to MSB, and passing to next byte as
needed.
There was also a subtle error: first two bits were unused, everything
was carried over on the right of two bits, even if it worked because of
the code requirement of always having a byte more at the end.
During the rewrite the code was made safer trying to avoid undefined
behavior due to shifting an uint8_t for more than 8 bits.
To test the bitfield array of counters set/get macros from the Redis Tcl
suite is hard, so a specialized command that is able to test the
internals was developed.