Cappuccino on Node.js

Background

Up until now Cappuccino has only been able to build on two different Javascript engines, Rhino (Linux and Mac) and JavaScriptCore (Mac). Rhino is very old, slow and is based on Java. JavaScriptCore is very fast and modern but runs only on Mac OS X. Almost everyone else in the Javascript world is using Node.js.

Announcement

Today we are proud to announce Cappuccino support for Node.js. This is made possible thanks the great work of Frank Rehwinkel.

How it is done

There has been multiple attempts to support this over the last couple of years and I think the reason for Frank’s success is that he did focus on the main issue and asked the right question. Why can’t you run it on Node.js if you can run it on JavaScriptCore?

Cappuccino uses the Javascript Narwhal library to run its build scripts. Narwhal can be run on multiple Javascript engines and we have supported Rhino and JavaScriptCore for many years. It is possible to support additional Javascript engines by implementing a specific API. That would glue Narwhal together with the Javascript engine of Node.js and this is what Frank has done.

How to use it

Everything works as before except we can now choose Node.js as the Javascript engine instead of Rhino or JavaScriptCore. In the next release of Cappuccino it will be included and ready to use out of the box. For now, if you want to try it just follow the instructions below:

1. Make sure Node.js is installed.
2. The latest Cappuccino-Base is needed. It is included in the latest version of Cappuccino. It’s most easily installed by following the instructions here.
3. Some Node.js modules are required. Run the Bash script at <Your Narwhal Folder>/packages/narwhal-node/bin/npm-install.
4. There are also some small changes to the Cappuccino framework necessary to support Node.js. They are not included in the latest version so you should use the master branch from Github.
5. Set the environment variable NARWHAL_ENGINE to node. In Bash this is export NARWHAL_ENGINE=node.

Now everything works as normal and you can build the downloaded (step 4 above) Cappuccino framework with jake install.

Performance

Node.js is much faster than Rhino and is up to par with JavaScriptCore. Here are some build tests done with the different engines using the command jake install on a MacBook Pro:

1. Node: 2 minutes
2. JavascriptCore: 2 minutes
3. Rhino: 5 minutes 30 seconds

The next step

As soon as possible we will drop support for Rhino as it is old and not maintained. It will allow us to be more up to date and for example support the ES6 release of Javascript.

The build process is still dependent on a couple of non Javascript tools like gcc and ShrinkSafe etc. When we have removed all dependencies it will be much easier to build Cappuccino on all platforms including Windows. Also in the long run it would be nice to remove Narwhal and maybe replace Jake (our build system) with something more modern. Work is being done to remove gcc and if you want to get involved in working with removing any of these dependancies please get in contact with us on the mailing list or on Gitter.