Microsoft to open source core components of its ‘Chakra’ JavaScript engine
Microsoft will be releasing the core components of its ‘Chakra’ JavaScript engine as open source in January 2016
Its raining open source now a days. After Apple announced that its Swift Programming Language will be made open source, Microsoft today plans to publish the core components of its “Chakra” JavaScript engine to GitHub under an MIT open source license in January 2016.
Microsoft made this announcement at the JSConf in Florida today. According to its plan, it will be open sourcing Chakra, the JavaScript engine used in its Edge and Internet Explorer browsers. The code will be published to the Microsoft’s GitHub page next month.
Microsoft is open sourcing what it calls ChakraCore. ChakraCore includes the complete JavaScript engine—the parser, the interpreter, the just-in-time compiler, and the garbage collector  along with the API used to embed the engine into applications such as Microsoft Edge.
Microsoft’s blog post announcing its plans also says that “In addition to the public, several organizations have already expressed interest in contributing to ChakraCore–among many others, we look forward to working with Intel, AMD, and NodeSource as we develop this community.”
Microsoft’s won’t be open sourcing other pieces of Chakra, including the COM diagnostic APIs and the private bindings to the browser and the Universal Windows Platform. Though the open sourced ChakraCore will have performance and capabilities, including asm.js and SIMD support, as well as cutting-edge support for new ECMAScript 2015 language features.
From Microsoft’s blog post:
“ChakraCore is already designed to fit into any application stack that calls for a fast, scalable, and lightweight engine. We intend to make it even more versatile over time, both within and beyond the Windows ecosystem. While the initial January release will be Windows-only, we are committed to bringing ChakraCore to other platforms in the future. We’d invite developers to help us in this pursuit by letting us know which other platforms they’d like to see ChakraCore supported on to help us prioritize future investments, or even by helping port it to the platform of their choice.”
