[webkit-dev] WebKit branch to support multiple VMs (e.g., Dart)

[Oliver Hunt]

On Dec 6, 2011, at 2:55 AM, Anton Muhin wrote:

> Good day, everyone!
> 
> I am sorry if it didn't sound clear enough in our original message,
> but we're not proposing a new language support, but we're proposing a
> patch which allows others runtimes to run along with JS in the
> browser.
> 
> Of course, we're doing this because of our work on Dart, but our
> intent was to solicit a feedback from the WebKit community if there is
> any interest in supporting runtimes additional to JS (and not JS +
> Dart) in the first place.
As I have already said, we already support multiple bindings being in use at the same time.  Continuing to claim that is your goal is not helpful.  Your goal is to allow additional non-standard languages to be provided by webcontent.  This is an academic exercise as it doesn't match webkit's goal of being a standards compliant engine, and also has dubious advantage even when supported -- as Vijay said multiple languages already compile to EcmaScript, there is no reason that Dart can't as well.

So even if it turns out that this can be implemented without regressing performance of those parts of webkit responsible for supporting open standards, it has a maintenance burden required to support a "feature" that has no business being in webkit.

--Oliver