Avril 2011 - Tachyon-list - mailman.iro.umontreal.ca

Mico: experimental Javascript programming environment
by Erick Lavoie 13 Avr '11

13 Avr '11

https://github.com/damelang/mico/ From the README: Mico is an experimental Javascript programming environment. It provides structure and functionality on top the Javascript engine of your choice. To this aim, Mico strives to use Javascript code instead of native, engine-specific code wherever possible. Mico currently provides a fairly complete DOM Level 2 Core implementation written in pure Javascript, with very limited Level 2 HTML and SVG support. It also provides incomplete Javascript bindings to SDL and a pure Javascript bare-bones implementation of the web browser "window" object. Rendering of DOM nodes happens via an AOP-inspired bridge between DOM elements and the underlying graphics library of your choice. Mico introduces a "system" object for interfacing with the underlying Javascript engine. This object allows for loading script files (via system.load()) and compiled bindings to C libraries (via system.dlload()). Scripts in Mico can declare dependencies on other "packages." At runtime, these dependencies are resolved automatically through a simple package location mechanism. As of this writing, Mico has been used for very little, mostly as a testbed for novel web browser implementations. Initial development of Mico was funded by Viewpoints Research Institute, NSF Grant No. 0639876 and Sun Microsystems. - Dan Amelang (dan(a)amelang.net <mailto:dan@amelang.net>)

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Image loader
by Marc Feeley 12 Avr '11

12 Avr '11

In order to estimate the time it takes to load an image in various ways I did the following test on my MacBook pro. I wrote a dummy assembler file with 5 MB worth of code (which is about the size of Tachyon's machine code right now). It contains lines like: .text .globl _codestart .globl _codeend _codestart: movq $123,%rax .byte 0xc3,0xc3,0xc3,0xc3,0xc3,0xc3,0xc3,0xc3 .byte 0xc3,0xc3,0xc3,0xc3,0xc3,0xc3,0xc3,0xc3 .byte 0xc3,0xc3,0xc3,0xc3,0xc3,0xc3,0xc3,0xc3 ... ;; about 700,000 lines of the same here _codeend: This file takes 2.6 seconds to assemble using the GNU assembler, which is reasonable. I linked the resulting object file with a main program in 2 variants: - main just calls codestart and terminates (direct embedded code) - main allocates a 5 MB machine code block, and copies the code from codestart to codeend to the block (copied embedded code) Finally, I also have a minimal C program which allocates a 5 MB machine code block, and reads a 5 MB binary file to the block using the Unix open and read functions (file code). Here are the running times in seconds (after a few dry runs): direct embedded code 0.003 copied embedded code 0.016 file code 0.009 The run time advantage of the first method is pretty clear. The startup is 3 to 5 times faster than the other methods. So lets aim to implement that. As I said, the startup time is really important for some applications (remember what Andreas said about Firefox... one of the reasons it is not implemented more in JS is that the startup time is currently too large). Marc

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Tachyon on github
by Marc Feeley 12 Avr '11

12 Avr '11

Hello Andreas, Dave and Brendan. We have now put the Tachyon sources on github, and have added a BSD license to the top of all the source files. You can clone the repo with git clone git@github.com:Tachyon-Team/Tachyon.git I propose that you first try to install Tachyon and get it working for you with V8. You will need to install V8 and modify it using the instructions in the file <Tachyon>/source/host/d8-tachyon-exts.cc . This will extend V8 with some required functionality (to create machine code blocks, execute them, I/O, etc). A "make" in the <Tachyon>/source directory will create the "tachyon" shell script, which invokes d8 to load the Tachyon VM. Tachyon will then compile a few JS files needed for its runtime, and then start a REPL (this takes 10 to 15 seconds, so be patient!). After that, type "/help" to get a summary of the available REPL special commands. Here's a sample REPL interaction: t> /load programs/fib/fib.js Loading script: "programs/fib/fib.js" t> /time fib(35) time: 2.711s t> /hir programs/fib/fib.js box function () [] { box function fib(box x) [] { entry: box x = arg 2; ... A possible next step for you would be to port Tachyon to SpiderMonkey. Try to follow the same structure as for V8, that is, add a file spidermonkey-tachyon-exts.{c|cc|h} which interfaces to the functions in the file host/tachyon-exts.cc . By the way, I just noticed that this file gratuitously uses C++ code and we'll rewrite it in pure C (SpiderMonkey is pure C right?). Let us know if you encounter problems and how we can help. Marc

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Compilers which generate JS
by Marc Feeley 10 Avr '11

10 Avr '11

Here's an interesting list of compilers which generate JS: https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/wiki/List-of-languages-that-comp… Also, the just release emscript compiles LLVM assembly code (and thus C programs) to JS: http://code.google.com/p/emscripten/ Marc

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License draft
by Bruno Dufour 08 Avr '11

08 Avr '11

Here's what I propose to use as a header in all files. Any comments / suggestions? Bruno

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D8 Extensions and C Source
by chevalma＠iro.umontreal.ca 06 Avr '11

06 Avr '11

I began the work to separate out the Tachyon C primitives from the code for the D8 extensions/proxies. As such, I created two new files, d8/tachyon-exts.cc and d8/tachyon-exts.h. I also created a d8-tachyon-exts.h header file, to be included in <V8>/src/d8.cc instead of including the cc file directly. I updated the instructions on how to modify V8 to make this work in d8-tachyon-exts.cc. This is now committed on the repository. Two minor issues: 1. I didn't have the profiler source, so I commented out the contents of the profiling functions for now. 2. I also created a loader.cc file for the image loader code, which will rely on our C primitives as well. I'm thinking of renaming our source/d8 folder to something like source/csrc, or something to reflect that it's a folder containing our C primitives, and not just d8 related code. Opinions? - Maxime

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Added compiler/sources.js
by Marc Feeley 06 Avr '11

06 Avr '11

The file compiler/sources.js is now automatically generated from the makefile. Can someone change the bootstrap code to use the information in that file? Marc

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Migration to GitHub
by Erick Lavoie 06 Avr '11

06 Avr '11

From now on, development will now take place on GitHub. To use GitHub instead of the current repo, do the following. 1. Ensure your public ssh keys for all your computers are linked to your account under "Account Settings". 2. Add github to your remote repositories git remote add github git@github.com:Tachyon-Team/Tachyon.git 3. Pull the latest changes from github (when you are in the master branch) git pull github master 4. Push your changes to github. Using the -u option will change the remote tracked branch from the diro repository to the github one (only works with git >= 1.7.1). git push -u github master Voilà! you have now migrated to github! Permissions to push and pull have been granted to Bruno, Maxime, Olivier Matz and Marc. Alex will be added once I know his user name. Public read-only access is available using 'git://github.com/Tachyon-Team/Tachyon.git'. Erick

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Link to github repository
by Erick Lavoie 06 Avr '11

06 Avr '11

Read-only access is available from git://github.com/elavoie/Tachyon.git Erick

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JOT: Journal of Object Technology - Real Men Do JavaScript! Programming the World in a Browser, Dave Thomas
by Marc Feeley 05 Avr '11

05 Avr '11

Interesting article by Dave Thomas (of OTI in Ottawa who implemented Smalltalk for IBM): http://www.jot.fm/issues/issue_2008_11/column3/index.html Marc

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