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ChakraCore Transition #6384
Description
Hello everyone,
In December of 2018, we announced our intent to adopt the Chromium Open Source project in the development of Microsoft Edge. At that time, we made no immediate changes to the ChakraCore project. Now that the new Microsoft Edge is generally available, we believe the time has come to transition ongoing ownership of ChakraCore to the community.
In order to mitigate any disruption, we are committed to providing 12 months of security patches to the most-recent release of ChakraCore (v1.11). This will be true whether or not the community picks up ongoing development. Microsoft will not provide security patches past March 9, 2021. Our hope is that the community will continue supporting ChakraCore after this date.
Some of you may have already heard from us directly, as we have begun to explore community ownership. And, while we haven’t yet reached a quorum of partners to make this viable, we are open and supportive for it to happen.
If you want to participate, or if you have questions or concerns, we want to hear from you.
- Contact us via email at ChakraCoreTransition@microsoft.com
- Contact us on Twitter @ChakraCore
- If you would like to have a one-on-one discussion, please reach out and we’ll set something up.
Lastly, we want to thank the ChakraCore and JavaScript communities for supporting us in our successes and in our failures. We’ve learned a lot and we’ve enjoyed working with you all.
All the best,
The Chakra Team
Activity
rhuanjl commentedon Mar 10, 2020
A note for anyone else thinking about this. Whilst I don't have enough time to take this on on my own I'd be very keen to contribute significantly.
In particular I would be happy to:
Roughly I'd be able to give CC about 10 focussed hours of input per month + some less focussed time for things like issue triage every day or two.
ppenzin commentedon Mar 11, 2020
I've contributed in the past as @penzn, will be interested in working on WebAssembly support and porting - but open to fix other issues.
divmain commentedon Mar 13, 2020
@rhuanjl @ppenzin - how would you like to proceed? We could either 1) add you both as contributors to get a sense of the workload and what other help you might need, or 2) wait to see if others chime in before moving forward.
rhuanjl commentedon Mar 13, 2020
I seriously doubt that @ppenzin and I will be enough to give CC the level of input it needs - I'm happy to be linked up with anyone else who's thinking of contributing to discuss and work out how we could do it but I think we need 2 or 3 others onboard before we move forward.
I've stated my interest publicly, primarily in hope that it will attract others who are interested but also know they can't take it on alone.
xiaoyinl commentedon Mar 13, 2020
@divmain Will Microsoft ship chakra.dll in Windows 10 after March 2021? If not, won't that break programs that use JsRT APIs in chakra.dll?
ppenzin commentedon Mar 14, 2020
@rhuanjl @divmain we can wait a little before finalizing contributors, but ultimately volunteers would need to get involved, however little their number is. In my opinion any number of volunteers is better than having the project archived - that way there is somebody to keep it up in case more volunteers appear.
I am willing to give it a shot as a contributor, and even think we both should do it, though I agree with @rhuanjl moving project forward with this little people would be a challenge.
What would happen to infrastructure - CI and the like, would Microsoft support it? We don't have to discuss that here if there are better channels.
CC @nmostafa
divmain commentedon Mar 14, 2020
@xiaoyinl
chakra.dllis actually distinct from ChakraCore and will be serviced separately according to Windows servicing timetable.@ppenzin Azure DevOps includes a generous free tier that should suffice for ChakraCore. Happy to discuss details if that'd be helpful.
rhuanjl commentedon Mar 14, 2020
@divmain
I think there's a few points of clarification on the chakra.dll vs chakracore issue that that will be important to numerous users:
On the infrastructure question @ppenzin raised - that will be one of several points we'll need to work through if we can find some more volunteers and get this off of the ground. I assume from your response on this point that microsoft is intending to take no official long term role at all? So everything and anything currently done by microsoft in relation to chakracore will need to be transitioned.
divmain commentedon Mar 16, 2020
Thanks for the clarifying questions.
Yes -
chakra.dllwill receive security fixes. The scope of this is described in the Windows Security Servicing documentation here. It is not intended thatchakra.dllreceive feature work, unless (in the very unlikely event) that work is necessary to address a security vulnerability.If the community takes on continued ownership of the project, any changes (like removing
charka.dll-specific code) are entirely up to y'all.Past March 2021, MSFT does not intend to invest official resources in ChakraCore. That said, if things are moving forward next March and a bit more time is needed to get infrastructure completely transitioned, I think we'll be reasonable and work with you. Certainly interested in making the transition successful.
ppenzin commentedon Mar 17, 2020
@divmain What about sources for commit bots - the ones doing merges, CI, various checks, including CLA, would that be released somewhere? This is a substantial part of ChakraCore development workflow.
rhuanjl commentedon Mar 17, 2020
I'm likely to have some significant unexpected free time over the next couple of weeks so whilst I still think we won't get far without more contributors volunteering.
I could make something of a start perhaps by cleaning up the issue log, closing duplicates and triaging etc. Please could I be given access to do that/what do I need to do to get that sort of access? @divmain
Perhaps if the log looked tidier others may be more likely to volunteer to help.
divmain commentedon Mar 25, 2020
Sorry for the delay folks - been a crazy few days.
@ppenzin I'm unsure about the commit bots. Let me look into it.
In the meantime, I've added you and @rhuanjl to the project with write access. Feel free to start with the triage process. Thanks!
Fly-Style commentedon Mar 25, 2020
Greetings, folks.
I am interested in working on ChakraCore as a contributor.
Also, I am interested in participating in community meetings, if they exist.
rhuanjl commentedon Mar 25, 2020
With 3 of us on board we've got a bit more chance of getting somewhere with this, thanks @Fly-Style
Nothing has happened yet beyond the discussion in this thread and what I've done today making a start at tidying up the issue log - there's still a long way to go there, and I'll continue chipping away at it as and when.
In terms of next steps - here's a quick brain dump of things I think we'll need to sort out
We need to think about the process for landing PRs before any more work can actually be submitted, historically any PR has required review by a MS contributor as well as passing all CI before being landed via the commit bot - if the key contributors are just the three of us the review process may be a bit slow + we'll need to know about if/how to use the commit bot.
We need to consider how/when this repository will be migrated out of Microsoft land or if we need to begin again with a clone.
We need to make a plan for moving the CI out of the Microsoft land
We need to consider what the copyright situation is - currently whilst everything is licensed under the MIT license it's also all marked as copyright Microsoft - as Microsoft will not be involved in future contributions do we need to adapt the copyright notices to say Microsoft + future contributors or community team or something?
We'll need a plan for handling security issues (assuming there are any major external users) - though we'll also need to consider at the moment that any security issue in chakracore master could also be a security issue in CharakrCore 1.11 and in the latest Chakra.dll as well hence how to collaborate with MS on such.
We need a roadmap for feature work and bug fixes/enhancements
We need to draw up a release plan/schedule of some kind
We need to make this project as attractive as possible for potential users AND potential contributors to get involved
I'm primarily keen to actually write code rather than handle admin points but unfortunately there's no point writing code without some of the above admin.
6 remaining items
rhuanjl commentedon Mar 28, 2020
Picking up on everything above I think we've got a really good chance of getting somewhere with this. A conference call to discuss some of the above points and hammer out an initial plan could be a very good next step.
Would it be possible to have all of us on a call:
@divmain (to answer any questions about support from microsoft)
@zenparsing
@ppenzin
@chicoxyzzy
@Fly-Style
@rhuanjl
I figure that arrangements/timing may be tricky I assume we've got a variety of timezones and other commitments to work around, here's a doodle poll with potential times for this call next week, the options are all of the times I can do, note I'm UK based so timezone is GMT, hopefully we can work something out that will fit most of us:
https://doodle.com/poll/fu33r24zd2mrdcac
ppenzin commentedon Mar 30, 2020
I've filed #6392 for CMake.
As for Wasm, @Cellule, @MikeHolman, and @LouisLaf do you have any input or wishes? My goal is to go through Wasm backlog turning notes into issues and triaging open issues.
And lastly, does anybody want to take a look at potential performance optimizations (for standard JS functionality of the engine, rather than Wasm)?
rhuanjl commentedon Mar 30, 2020
Based on poll responses 7pm GMT today (just over 5 hours from now) is the only option this week - though no reply from @zenparsing or @divmain yet - I'll hold 2 more hours then send out an invitation for that time.
Cellule commentedon Mar 30, 2020
All I can think of is issue #4745 should be updated to latest wasm spec and probably broke down into separate issues for each features
rhuanjl commentedon Mar 31, 2020
I've opened #6399 to document the developing plans and provide an opportunity for interactive review and comment.
I'm sorry about the short notice and time zone confusion with the call last night - but it was good to discuss with those who could make it - I will try and arrange something with a bit more notice next time.
Taritsyn commentedon Apr 3, 2020
What will happen to the Chakra-Samples repository? Will it also come under community management?
rhuanjl commentedon Apr 3, 2020
That repository has been stale for some time - we certainly would like to create a more extensive CC usage sample, though we don’t have a clear plan at the moment. Whether that would be the best place for such a sample is another question.
divmain commentedon Apr 8, 2020
@zenparsing - I'll look into the OSS sponsorship question. This is an area where I'm significantly investing, building mutually beneficial relationships with OSS projects (not just ChakraCore). So this is certainly in line with my priorities. That said, money is always the hardest ask :) I'll see what I can do!
(Also, hi Kevin!)
docs(v8): Edge has been rebuilt on top of Chromium
Xaekai commentedon May 5, 2020
As a complete outsider who's never once looked at Chakra before today, and as someone who's been critically assessing the future of the Lua ecosystem as a longtime user of it recently, I really hope Chakra can find a new life as a glue-script. I suppose consider this a rather verbose ++ to what @rhuanjl said in the previous thread on this topic, or perhaps insight from the perspective of a dev that's looking for just the right tool to give users a scripting environment and finds the solutions on offer insufficient.
Basically, right now there are zero ECMAScript JIT engines that are freestanding with C/C++ embedding being their first class citizen. All the extant JITs are from a browser heritage and that shadow looms large.
Lua has been the darling of devs seeking a simple to embed and bind glue-script to surface a readily available API to end users, and has been filling that role in a wonderful fashion for over a decade. But time marches on, things change, and certain design decisions haunt. I could write a very long essay on why Lua is in the state it is, but my point is this: Most people I know still use LuaJit not PUC-Lua, which is stuck at a quasi 5.2 version. Which means in-context strings are treated like binary and pattern matching on Unicode is totally broken.
There is a open niche for a high performance embeddable scripting language engine that lives in the modern era where Unicode is ubiquitous, and Chakra could conquer that niche. Just make embedding a first class citizen. There are tons of embeddables out there, but their design goal tends to be reduced binary footprint, to facilitate support in IoT devices and such. But if I'm building an application that's going to be a few hundred meg on disk anyway, I don't care if the script engine adds another fifteen. I just want something I already know, my users already know, and doesn't have the shortcomings of LuaJIT.
rhuanjl commentedon May 5, 2020
@Xaekai That is exactly the sort of niche I'm hoping chakracore can fill as we continue it as a community project - that said we're talking about continuing it as a team of hobbyists with full time jobs doing other things - so we're unlikely to be always up to date with all Javascript features etc. - but we intend to do what we can and to focus on things that embedders want.
Interesting you mention pattern matching - Chakracore's RegExp engine is probably the part of the engine most in need of improvement - notably it doesn't currently support matching unicode surrogate pairs properly - I was hoping to fix this prior to our first community release but it's more work than I thought and it will likely slip until our second release.
docs(v8): Edge has been rebuilt on top of Chromium (#585)
docs(v8): Edge has been rebuilt on top of Chromium (#585)
docs(v8): Edge has been rebuilt on top of Chromium (#585)