Ruby in the browser with NativeClient (NaCl)

Intro

• JS as a monopoly
• CoffeeScript?
• New TryRuby site
• gestalt -- let's you do <script type="test/ruby"></script>
  • Uses MS's DLR
  • Silverlight/IronRuby
  • Unsure future

History

• Netscape, mimetypes, NPAPI
• Standalone plugins
• Powerful, but security nightmare

Chrome

• Separate processes
• NaCl
• Pepper Bridge (PPAPI)
• Sandboxed plugins
• Native machine code

NaCl

• Compile code with specialized toolchain (modified GCC)

• NaCl runtime verifies untrusted code (static analysis)

• Executes verified code

• Limited functionality. Can't fork, limited FS access, etc.

• Figures out your platform (x86, ARM, etc) over JSON

• You can talk via JavaScript using the Pepper API

• Listening for events

• Like WebWorkers

• Has simlar APIs to browsers

• Same priveledges as the JS runtime

naclports

• Can do pthreads (browsers are single threaded, but Chrome has separate processes)

• Lots of C/C++ libraries

• Video

• Native

• Need: Chrome ~9 (1 yr old) with nacl enabled

• Latest: 14

• http://nacl-quake.appspot.com/

Future of NaCl?

• Cool, but...

• It's in the wild

• But getting replaced with PNaCl

• See chrome://plugins -- enabled in the Chrome Web Store (for Chrome apps)

• Long term vision? Maybe enabling outright

• Examples

  • Netflix on the Chromebook
  • Google app engine
  • Exacycle -- for scientific computing

PNaCl

• Does LLVM bytecode!
  • Fortran!
  • PyPy
  • Rubinius
  • Objective-C

EMScripten

• LLVM to JavaScript
• http://repl.it