5 ms·

Txiki.js: Tiny JavaScript runtime built with QuickJS and libuv

96 points by juancampa 5y ago

Zababa 5y ago
Since it's presented as a "tiny" runtime, I'd like a size comparaison between this and Node in the readme. Same thing with the use cases (learning projects or "just for fun" are very valid use cases!).
- oso2k 5y ago
  QuickJS [0] quotes a 210KiB binary. [0] https://bellard.org/quickjs/ https://bellard.org/quickjs/
- Zababa 5y ago
  Replying to myself, on Pop!_OS I get a final tjs build of 1.8 Mo. My Node weighs 71 M for comparaison.
  - edflsafoiewq 5y ago
    Why is node so large?
    - c-smile 5y ago
      V8 alone is around 40/50 Mb.
      - oso2k 5y ago
        And used to be under 10 MB. https://groups.google.com/g/v8-users/c/OaC4TQQjxFg https://groups.google.com/g/v8-users/c/OaC4TQQjxFg
    - Zababa 5y ago
      Probably because Node (and V8) don't try to optimize for size but for speed of execution.
  - c-smile 5y ago
    In fact 1.8 Mb is quite a lot for QuickJS. My Sciter engine that includes as QuickJS as HTML/CSS engines is about 6 Mb. My port of QuickJS [1] that also includes persistent storage (think of MongoDB built into JS) is 736 Kb on Windows. [1] https://github.com/c-smile/quickjspp https://github.com/c-smile/quickjspp
    - Zababa 5y ago
      The project also includes wasm3 for WASM, curl and libuv. That's probably what's taking space.
beebeepka 5y ago
Oh, goody. Last time I tried QuickJS it didn't have support for asynchronous generators and proxies. Thank you, Mr. Bellard and whoever is working on this runtime. Your work is appreciated
jbeard4 5y ago
Fabrice Bellard is a legend.
windowojji 5y ago
For other small JS engines similar to QuickJS see Hermes: https://github.com/facebook/hermes https://github.com/facebook/hermes
- filleduchaos 5y ago
  Hermes is far from a small JS engine (and is not really similar to QuickJS at all). Duktape, Espruino and JerryScript are way closer examples (both in size and spirit).
- flanbiscuit 5y ago
  Fitbit uses Jerryscript in some of their watch OSes. Well, at least they were last time I was tinkering with making my own watch face https://jerryscript.net/ https://jerryscript.net/
gavinray 5y ago
Is this intended to be used with the C header as an embedded lib + runtime to add JS scripting support to applications?
- saghul 5y ago
  For the moment the intended use case is experimentation, by using the tjs binary as the runtime. Embedding is something I’d like to get to, eventually.
saghul 5y ago
Oh nice to see this here! I’m the author of this little amalgamation, happy to answer any questions :-) I just love small (for certain definitions of small) C libraries and got hooked to QuickJS the moment I tried it. After a few weekends of tinkering I had “quv” which was just QuickJS running on the libuv event loop. Later on I integrated curl and implemented xmlhttprequest on top of it. The last large change I made was to embed wasm3 as the WASM / WASI runtime. I haven’t had the time to continue working on it for a while, seeing this here might be the encouragement I needed! :-)
- miohtama 5y ago
  What kind of applications Txiki is a good fit?
- juancampa 5y ago
  Would be nice to get some debugging capabilities. Perhaps implementing the devtools protocol
mcfedr 5y ago
Good stuff, I'm interested, what's the use case here? And what trade offs compared to nodejs are we making?
- saghul 5y ago
  No defined use case really, tinkering :-) Initially I just wanted to try out some other ways to build a JS runtime, now that the web is much more advanced than it was when Node was created. Shortly after I realized my goals aligned very well with those of Deno: provide web APIs where possible on a CLI / server runtime. Granted Deno is a much bigger beast.
talhof8 5y ago
I wonder if multi-threaded JS will ever be a thing, despite the event-loop nature of the language
- hawk_ 5y ago
  the language isn't inherently event-looped. even in the browser you can use workers.
- Lerc 5y ago
  It's something I'd like to see. I have wondered if quickjs might serve as an experimental base to try and implement such a beast. The main issue is having a thread aware object lifetime mechanism. I think quickjs is a reference counting GC. It might be possible to wedge something in there.
truth_seeker 5y ago
Related :- https://github.com/just-js/just https://github.com/just-js/just
hungryforcodes 5y ago
So how does this compare to Espruino exactly -- which uses between 100K to 200K depending on which features you compile it with, has an excellent ecosystem, drivers for most hardware and acts alot like Node.
apatheticonion 5y ago
Can we compile this to WASM and compile JavaScript to a binary format that includes the runtime?

96 points by juancampa 5y ago

Since it's presented as a "tiny" runtime, I'd like a size comparaison between this and Node in the readme. Same thing with the use cases (learning projects or "just for fun" are very valid use cases!).

oso2k 5y ago
QuickJS [0] quotes a 210KiB binary. [0] https://bellard.org/quickjs/ https://bellard.org/quickjs/
Zababa 5y ago
Replying to myself, on Pop!_OS I get a final tjs build of 1.8 Mo. My Node weighs 71 M for comparaison.
- edflsafoiewq 5y ago
  Why is node so large?
  - c-smile 5y ago
    V8 alone is around 40/50 Mb.
    - oso2k 5y ago
      And used to be under 10 MB. https://groups.google.com/g/v8-users/c/OaC4TQQjxFg https://groups.google.com/g/v8-users/c/OaC4TQQjxFg
  - Zababa 5y ago
    Probably because Node (and V8) don't try to optimize for size but for speed of execution.
- c-smile 5y ago
  In fact 1.8 Mb is quite a lot for QuickJS. My Sciter engine that includes as QuickJS as HTML/CSS engines is about 6 Mb. My port of QuickJS [1] that also includes persistent storage (think of MongoDB built into JS) is 736 Kb on Windows. [1] https://github.com/c-smile/quickjspp https://github.com/c-smile/quickjspp
  - Zababa 5y ago
    The project also includes wasm3 for WASM, curl and libuv. That's probably what's taking space.

beebeepka 5y ago

Oh, goody. Last time I tried QuickJS it didn't have support for asynchronous generators and proxies. Thank you, Mr. Bellard and whoever is working on this runtime. Your work is appreciated

jbeard4 5y ago

Fabrice Bellard is a legend.

windowojji 5y ago

For other small JS engines similar to QuickJS see Hermes: https://github.com/facebook/hermes https://github.com/facebook/hermes

filleduchaos 5y ago
Hermes is far from a small JS engine (and is not really similar to QuickJS at all). Duktape, Espruino and JerryScript are way closer examples (both in size and spirit).
flanbiscuit 5y ago
Fitbit uses Jerryscript in some of their watch OSes. Well, at least they were last time I was tinkering with making my own watch face https://jerryscript.net/ https://jerryscript.net/

gavinray 5y ago

Is this intended to be used with the C header as an embedded lib + runtime to add JS scripting support to applications?

saghul 5y ago
For the moment the intended use case is experimentation, by using the tjs binary as the runtime. Embedding is something I’d like to get to, eventually.

saghul 5y ago

Oh nice to see this here! I’m the author of this little amalgamation, happy to answer any questions :-) I just love small (for certain definitions of small) C libraries and got hooked to QuickJS the moment I tried it. After a few weekends of tinkering I had “quv” which was just QuickJS running on the libuv event loop. Later on I integrated curl and implemented xmlhttprequest on top of it. The last large change I made was to embed wasm3 as the WASM / WASI runtime. I haven’t had the time to continue working on it for a while, seeing this here might be the encouragement I needed! :-)

miohtama 5y ago
What kind of applications Txiki is a good fit?
juancampa 5y ago
Would be nice to get some debugging capabilities. Perhaps implementing the devtools protocol

mcfedr 5y ago

Good stuff, I'm interested, what's the use case here? And what trade offs compared to nodejs are we making?

saghul 5y ago
No defined use case really, tinkering :-) Initially I just wanted to try out some other ways to build a JS runtime, now that the web is much more advanced than it was when Node was created. Shortly after I realized my goals aligned very well with those of Deno: provide web APIs where possible on a CLI / server runtime. Granted Deno is a much bigger beast.

talhof8 5y ago

I wonder if multi-threaded JS will ever be a thing, despite the event-loop nature of the language

hawk_ 5y ago
the language isn't inherently event-looped. even in the browser you can use workers.
Lerc 5y ago
It's something I'd like to see. I have wondered if quickjs might serve as an experimental base to try and implement such a beast. The main issue is having a thread aware object lifetime mechanism. I think quickjs is a reference counting GC. It might be possible to wedge something in there.

truth_seeker 5y ago

Related :- https://github.com/just-js/just https://github.com/just-js/just

hungryforcodes 5y ago

So how does this compare to Espruino exactly -- which uses between 100K to 200K depending on which features you compile it with, has an excellent ecosystem, drivers for most hardware and acts alot like Node.

apatheticonion 5y ago

Can we compile this to WASM and compile JavaScript to a binary format that includes the runtime?