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Comment by domenicd | Hacker News Reader

It's important to remember that ChakraCore only currently builds on Windows, so this is only for Windows Node.js builds.

The ChakraCore roadmap [1] shows that they plan on porting the interpreter to Ubuntu, but not to Mac OS, and they don't plan on porting the JIT. So even it does go Windows + Linux, it will still be a low-performing toy on Linux.

This is vaguely interesting from a technical point of view, but doesn't seem like it'll majorly impact the future of Node.js, except maybe as something Microsoft can offer for Azure customers that choose Windows Server.

[1]: https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore/wiki/Roadmap

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The goal is for all of ChakraCore to be broadly cross-platform eventually, including the JIT, and including many more platforms than just Ubuntu x64. The roadmap reflects our next steps for the next 6 months but is not the entire journey.

Disclosure: I work on Chakra

>> An implementation of ChakraCore interpreter and runtime, no JIT, on Linux.

You should update the wiki if you work on the project then. The stated roadmap goal seems fairly clear and aligns with a typical Microsoft strategy to ensure Windows remains the premium platform for its "open source" efforts.

Not being negative that is just the way it has gone in the past so you are fighting an uphill battle.

Disclosure: None

Thanks for your thoughts :) We've updated the roadmap[1] to call out that JIT and more platforms are coming in future iterations.

1: https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore/wiki/Roadmap

Even the updated Roadmap suggests that Windows remains the primary platform. This Windows-first backend is a bad idea for Node.js, unless the team (and MS) commits to supporting Linux and Mac on par with Windows. That includes not releasing unless they have performance/feature parity on all major OSes, and committing equal resources to all.

While MS is nowhere as powerful as it was in the 90s, this is exactly how MS-Java happened and why Sun went to court.

Almost all software has a primary platform. There are a lot of free software apps where windows is either not a priority, or where the devs refuse to implement patches that improve how it works under windows. Additionally, this is just one engine that node supports, in addition to v8, and I assume that with this, other engines can, or could be added in the future. Node's goal is to be a javascript server platform, and that means having hooks both upward and downward to make developers' jobs easier.

> Almost all software has a primary platform.

I have no disagreement with software having a primary platform. However, it would make a lot of sense for open source software to choose an open source platform as primary.

Add: I guess what I'm saying is, if you're making enhancements to an existing Open Source project which already works on non-proprietary platforms, it would be better if those enhancements work equally well on non-proprietary platforms.

There are tons of FOSS/OSS projects for which OSX is the main platform.

Windows isn't exactly a "proprietary" platform, the OS is closed source and proprietary is but it's the wrong definition to use to describe it as a platform especially today with PAAS/IAAS.

Windows isn't free that's true but as far as PAAS (Azure/Azure-Like) goes it's not really a critical part of the pricing, and even for IAAS it's not that important.

One could also say that RHEL, SLES and the likes are proprietary distributions of Linux, they are open source, but proprietary none the less.

What remarkable or known FOSS/OSS projects are OS X as the main or only platform that aren't inherently platform specific like homebrew?

I can't think of one open source project that I use that is only available on OS X or primarily an OS X project.

There was just a comment on GitHub [1] that updates this a bit:

> For cross-platform support, the key target for next six months on the roadmap is to get the interpreter & runtime working. JIT would come after that (don't read it as no JIT forever - it was just a breakdown of what we need enable and its ordering for next 6 mos).

So maybe eventually it will be fully supported. (No update on Mac OS yet, but I can give them the benefit of the doubt there...)

[1]: https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/4765#issuecomment-172942...

Seems comparable to the divide between Go and GccGo -- largely identical but conceptually very distinct.

I don't know of anyone voluntarily using GccGo.

Didn't they open sourced the engine? If so people can port it as they like.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the big win here having Node.js run on Vuze ?

And how do they expect to be taken seriously if they are not going truly cross platform?

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