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There are what, 5+ rust javascript engines that claim to be production-ready? Bolting one of those on in place of spider monkey seems like a reasonable future d

There are what, 5+ rust javascript engines that claim to be production-ready? Bolting one of those on in place of spider monkey seems like a reasonable future direction

mort96 6mo ago
What do you mean by "production ready" here exactly? In a web browser context, the JS engine is expected to have a high performance optimising JIT compiler. Do the existing Rust JS engines have that?
- swiftcoder 6mo ago
  I honestly don't know, but they do say "production ready" on their marketing pages, so... For an example of what I mean, see JetCrab: https://jetcrab.com https://jetcrab.com
  - mort96 6mo ago
    That page says: > Complete JavaScript execution pipeline from source code parsing to bytecode execution. So it's a bytecode interpreter, not a JIT. It might still be production ready for a bunch of use cases. I may use it as a scripting layer for some pluggable piece of software or a game. I wouldn't consider it appropriate for a "production ready web browser" which intends to compete with Firefox and Chrome. EDIT: Also for some reason all its components are called v8_something? That's pretty off putting, you can't just take another project's name like that.. and from the author's Reddit comments it seems to be mostly AI slop anyway. I'm guessing Claude wrote the "production ready" part on the website, I wouldn't trust it.
  - CryZe 6mo ago
    This doesn't implement a JS engine, it's just a wrapper around boa.
- 8NNTt8z3QvLT8tp 6mo ago
  There's something to be said for the security benefits of not having a JIT though. Especially if you've used Rust for the engine you should have pretty solid security.
  - px43 6mo ago
    Yeah, having a code section that is writable and executable is a huge no-no from a security standpoint. JIT is a fundamentally insecure concept, just in general. By definition it's trading security for speed.
    - epcoa 6mo ago
      lol
      - mort96 6mo ago
        I mean they're right.
depr 6mo ago
They may be production-ready in some sense but they're not ready to be put in Firefox, and/or they are v8 bindings.
nicoburns 6mo ago
They're all more than 10x slower than SpiderMonkey.
siwatanejo 6mo ago
wait, Servo is a js engine? I thought it was only about rendering websites

There are what, 5+ rust javascript engines that claim to be production-ready? Bolting one of those on in place of spider monkey seems like a reasonable future direction

mort96 6mo ago

What do you mean by "production ready" here exactly? In a web browser context, the JS engine is expected to have a high performance optimising JIT compiler. Do the existing Rust JS engines have that?

swiftcoder 6mo ago
I honestly don't know, but they do say "production ready" on their marketing pages, so... For an example of what I mean, see JetCrab: https://jetcrab.com https://jetcrab.com
- mort96 6mo ago
  That page says: > Complete JavaScript execution pipeline from source code parsing to bytecode execution. So it's a bytecode interpreter, not a JIT. It might still be production ready for a bunch of use cases. I may use it as a scripting layer for some pluggable piece of software or a game. I wouldn't consider it appropriate for a "production ready web browser" which intends to compete with Firefox and Chrome. EDIT: Also for some reason all its components are called v8_something? That's pretty off putting, you can't just take another project's name like that.. and from the author's Reddit comments it seems to be mostly AI slop anyway. I'm guessing Claude wrote the "production ready" part on the website, I wouldn't trust it.
- CryZe 6mo ago
  This doesn't implement a JS engine, it's just a wrapper around boa.
8NNTt8z3QvLT8tp 6mo ago
There's something to be said for the security benefits of not having a JIT though. Especially if you've used Rust for the engine you should have pretty solid security.
- px43 6mo ago
  Yeah, having a code section that is writable and executable is a huge no-no from a security standpoint. JIT is a fundamentally insecure concept, just in general. By definition it's trading security for speed.
  - epcoa 6mo ago
    lol
    - mort96 6mo ago
      I mean they're right.

depr 6mo ago

They may be production-ready in some sense but they're not ready to be put in Firefox, and/or they are v8 bindings.

nicoburns 6mo ago

They're all more than 10x slower than SpiderMonkey.

siwatanejo 6mo ago

wait, Servo is a js engine? I thought it was only about rendering websites