Oh no, you're thinking, yet another cookie pop-up. Well, sorry, it's the law. We measure how many people read us, and ensure you see relevant ads, by storing cookies on your device. If you're cool with that, hit “Accept all Cookies”. For more info and to customize your settings, hit “Customize Settings”.

Review and manage your consent

Here's an overview of our use of cookies, similar technologies and how to manage them. You can also change your choices at any time, by hitting the “Your Consent Options” link on the site's footer.

Manage Cookie Preferences
  • These cookies are strictly necessary so that you can navigate the site as normal and use all features. Without these cookies we cannot provide you with the service that you expect.

  • These cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you. They perform functions like preventing the same ad from continuously reappearing, ensuring that ads are properly displayed for advertisers, and in some cases selecting advertisements that are based on your interests.

  • These cookies collect information in aggregate form to help us understand how our websites are being used. They allow us to count visits and traffic sources so that we can measure and improve the performance of our sites. If people say no to these cookies, we do not know how many people have visited and we cannot monitor performance.

See also our Cookie policy and Privacy policy.

This article is more than 1 year old

Microsoft drops dogma, open-sources Chakra JavaScript engine

The core can ‘compile, execute code without any dependencies’

Microsoft's wheel of change has seen it further abandon closed-source dogma to open its Chakra, thereby improving its karma.

The Chakra in question is the Chakra JavaScript engine it's been working on since 2008 and which the company will now largely open-source.

The release will cover the “self-contained” parts of the code, and will hit the Web as ChakraCore, with support from Intel, AMD and NodeSource.

As a self-contained project, the core will include everything needed to “parse, interpret, compile and execute JavaScript code without any dependencies on Microsoft Edge internals”, Microsoft says.

Redmond's announcement, made by Gaurav Seth and Adalberto Foresti over the weekend, says a GitHub repository will be posted next month.

Seth and Foresti write that the Chakra architecture's “multi-tiered pipeline that supports an interpreter, a multi-tiered background JIT compiler, and a traditional mark and sweep garbage collector that can do concurrent and partial collections” deliver performance and scalability from “cloud services to the Internet of Things”.

The ChakraCore VM can work with NoSQL databases, productivity software and game engines, they write, and supports Node.js to extend its reach.

To prep the open source version, Microsoft got rid of Chakra's private bindings to the browser and to the Universal Windows Platform. It also rewrote the old COM-based diagnostic APIs, providing diagnostics which are “platform agnostic and could be standardised or made interoperable across different implementations”.

Chakra componentisation

ChakraCore cordoned off from Windows for open source release. Image: Microsoft blog post

While the initial open source ChakraCore will be a Windows-only beast, Seth and Foresti “invite developers to help us in this pursuit by letting us know which other platforms they’d like to see ChakraCore supported on to help us prioritize future investments, or even by helping port it to the platform of their choice.” ®

 

Similar topics

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like