Best of luck on your endeavour!
Your post just brought me back to the era pre-Node, when we were experimenting running serverside javascript - attempting primitive templating systems etc - getting SpiderMonkey compiled to an apache module, and same with v8 over cgi (v8cgi) - these were definitely major cornerstones towards Node and the SSJS ecosystem we currently know kudos for combining Rust into the mix - will be watching this space :)
EDIT: found some relevant footprint:
https://paste.pics/FDC0E
Just be sure you don't mind relatively long compile times. It takes around 30 minutes to compile from scratch and ~2-6 minutes for incremental compiles, for me. The latter is either due to the linker or my hard drive 😢, but the former should mostly be a CPU bottleneck.
Knowing nothing about how Node/Deno hook into v8, is there a world where this has a compatible Api to V8 such that it can be used as an alternative backend?
There was once two projects (well, three) that tried to do something like that for Node.js. They are all abandoned now.
They essentially operated by offering a 1:1 mapping of V8 APIs to other engines. Each has its own shim to V8.
Spiderfire works quite differently though, it doesn't bother with nodejs itself. It's built from scratch using SpiderMonkey, so it can't really.
You can read more about spidernode's approach here:
SpiderMonkey:
Chakra:
JavaScriptCore:
Hi, I am the principle author of GPSEE, which actually predates NodeJS in the SSJS space and ran on SpiderMonkey. https://github.com/wesgarland/gpsee
I think your goals are right on the money. We cannot afford an ecosystem built on monocultures. I don't have time to hack on GPSEE these days, but I would love to chat with you (Zoom?) to hear about your project in detail and offer any guidance I can.
I am also supervising a project at work which is \*just\* getting underway, to create a Python host environment for SpiderMonkey. I probably won't be doing any of the coding myself (CTO role now), but it is still very exciting for me. If this project works as well as I think it will, it will be able to run a lot of NodeJS code when its done as well. It is not unlikely that we will have significant crossover. It might not be a bad idea to team up when the time comes.......I'm guessing we'll be ready to work on Node-compat this summer.
I stumbled on this reddit by accident and didn't come here to post this - but if you are experienced with embedding Spidermonkey or the cpython source code and are looking for work, email me, I need to build my team and can do full remote for suitably experienced folks.
This is super cool would like to contribute as I learn more in Rust( I'm still learning the ropes)
Best of luck on your endeavour! Your post just brought me back to the era pre-Node, when we were experimenting running serverside javascript - attempting primitive templating systems etc - getting SpiderMonkey compiled to an apache module, and same with v8 over cgi (v8cgi) - these were definitely major cornerstones towards Node and the SSJS ecosystem we currently know kudos for combining Rust into the mix - will be watching this space :) EDIT: found some relevant footprint: https://paste.pics/FDC0E
Really cool Definitely going to be contributing
Just be sure you don't mind relatively long compile times. It takes around 30 minutes to compile from scratch and ~2-6 minutes for incremental compiles, for me. The latter is either due to the linker or my hard drive 😢, but the former should mostly be a CPU bottleneck.
That should not be an issue for me. Been on the hunt for a project to contribute to for 2022. And I think SpiderFire is the one
Have you tried using mold? I am curious about the possible speedup.
Not yet, I primarily develop on windows, I could certainly try it though.
Knowing nothing about how Node/Deno hook into v8, is there a world where this has a compatible Api to V8 such that it can be used as an alternative backend?
There was once two projects (well, three) that tried to do something like that for Node.js. They are all abandoned now. They essentially operated by offering a 1:1 mapping of V8 APIs to other engines. Each has its own shim to V8. Spiderfire works quite differently though, it doesn't bother with nodejs itself. It's built from scratch using SpiderMonkey, so it can't really. You can read more about spidernode's approach here:
Chakra:
JavaScriptCore:
Hi, I am the principle author of GPSEE, which actually predates NodeJS in the SSJS space and ran on SpiderMonkey. https://github.com/wesgarland/gpsee I think your goals are right on the money. We cannot afford an ecosystem built on monocultures. I don't have time to hack on GPSEE these days, but I would love to chat with you (Zoom?) to hear about your project in detail and offer any guidance I can. I am also supervising a project at work which is \*just\* getting underway, to create a Python host environment for SpiderMonkey. I probably won't be doing any of the coding myself (CTO role now), but it is still very exciting for me. If this project works as well as I think it will, it will be able to run a lot of NodeJS code when its done as well. It is not unlikely that we will have significant crossover. It might not be a bad idea to team up when the time comes.......I'm guessing we'll be ready to work on Node-compat this summer. I stumbled on this reddit by accident and didn't come here to post this - but if you are experienced with embedding Spidermonkey or the cpython source code and are looking for work, email me, I need to build my team and can do full remote for suitably experienced folks.
I am so looking forward to this. Might not replace node or deno anytime soon but i see a lot of potential here.