STPyV8 – Python3 and JavaScript Interop with V8 | Hacker News Reader

STPyV8 – Python3 and JavaScript Interop with V8

github.com

48 pointspthyme7 comments

> Other uses include squeezing in some "bare-metal" hyper-optimized (by V8) JavaScript into your Python projects, say as a stepping-stone to a full node.js port.

So we resort to having a double GC where one GC is present in Python and another one is in V8 which by reading this "use-case" sounds pretty strange for "bare-metal" applications which begs the question: Why?

There's a reason the deno project switched from Go to Rust to eliminate this problem and I don't see why using this library with Python + V8 for this type of use-case would make any sense.

Probably because a GC is tightly coupled to the runtime system of a language, and using a different GC requires rewriting the entire interpreter.

Not just an issue for ‘bare metal’ applications- two GCs will be difficult for more complex scenarios as well where objects will have longer lifetimes spanning VMs.

This is a cool project that can definitely be useful, but those GC issues could rise up if you try a complex project and don’t design for them.

This is full of weird examples. I take it it’s more useful for emulations than for use in any production environment.

> Calling methods on a JavaScript class from Python code...

This feels like an incomplete solution to a nonexistent problem.

JavaScript and Python can communicate however you want them to over a Unix or IP socket, which will ALWAYS be much lighter weight than running layered interpreters this way. All you need to do is determine a communication protocol and implement a basic API. Send a command, wait, and listen for a result.

> Wrapping a JavaScript function in a Python function...

There are other ways to skin that cat. And most of them are better.

Interesting project, glad to see some movement there!

Over here we have a high interest in running JS code efficiently within multiple host languages. To that end we ported Ruby’s mini_racer to Python.

https://github.com/sqreen/PyMiniRacer

We also maintain a mini_racer fork and regularly try to backport performance improvements upstream.

We also support alternative platforms such as Alpine/musl and Solaris. One of our main pain points is that the whole libv8 tooling/build system is ever changing and terribly self-serving to Google, so as much as we want to improve support for additional platforms upstream, it’s a tall order to have our hacks to build for those cleaned up and merged there.

Wonder what this plus Electron would look like. I know... I know... it sounds ridiculous, but if we're merging JS and Python as it is.... Why not?

Makes a lot of sense to me. Electron offers a lot more flexibility from a design standpoint if you don’t care for the look and feel of Qt5 or GTK.

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