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by hajile 4244 days ago
And this is why we need to simply switch to LLVM. It gives us a sane bytecode, allows any language, allows real pre-browser optimization, etc. Mozilla's moving that direction with Rust and Servo. Google has already experimented with it via pnacl, and webkit/apple already actively compiles JS to llvm.

For backward compatibility, just use and extend emscripten. As a bonus, this would allow the DOM interface to be reworked so we can get it right.
2 comments
bobajeff 4244 days ago
Does it really allow any language? That sounds nice in theory but how many complete languages have been fully implemented on top of vanilla LLVM and which version does it need? I see many experimental frontends that may one day be complete but by then LLVM will be at a new version and will likely be using a different bytecode.

I like the idea of having a language specifically for compiling to but either way someone has to build the prototype implementation. This idea of building LLVM, JVM or CLR in to browsers might be good but code is what matters when it comes to proposing standards.

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legulere 4244 days ago
Well LLVM heavily relies on not having forward compatibility (new versions spew out LLVM IR that can't be used by older versions) and backward compatibility is merely an afterthought.
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hajile 4244 days ago
That's a standards issue. If w3c froze a particular version as the "one true version", then whatever experimentation the llvm guys want to do with whatever other versions doesn't matter.

Another solution is to version your code <script type="llvm" src="foo.ll" version="3.6.1" />

I'm already of the belief that w3c needs to require versioning of js code instead of stuff like 'use strict' (if it's bad, just remove it in new versions and move on). For backwards compatibility, if there's no version, assume ECMAScript3.

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sanxiyn 4244 days ago
Khronos Group standardized LLVM IR 3.2 as SPIR(Standard Portable Intermediate Representation). It is an existence proof that standardizing LLVM IR is possible.

https://www.khronos.org/spir/

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legulere 4241 days ago
I actually work a bit with SPIR. They standardized a subset of LLVM IR 3.2 as SPIR 1.2

SPIR 2.0 on the other hand already is based off LLVM IR 3.4

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