Microsoft has announced that ChakraCore, the core of the Chakra JavaScript engine that powers the Microsoft Edge browser and Universal Windows Platform apps for Windows 10, can now run on versions of OS X and Linux.
Microsoft previously released ChakraCore as an open source project, and this new move means that developers will have an easier time creating cross-platforms apps. In a blog post, Microsoft stated:
The JavaScript Runtime (JSRT) APIs to host ChakraCore were originally designed for Windows, so they inevitably had a few Windows dependencies – for example, Win32 usage of UTF16-LE encoding for strings, where other platforms might use UTF8-encoded strings. As part of enabling cross-platform support, some of the JSRT APIs have been refactored and redesigned to allow developers to write platform agnostic code to embed ChakraCore. Maintaining backwards compatibility is a core principle that we follow – so applications written with the previous set of JSRT APIs on Windows will continue to work as is. You can build the engine and write a Hello-world app to get started with ChakraCore on the Windows/Linux/OS X.
Microsoft plans to continue adding features for ChakraCore to other platforms, including its JIT compiler, in the near future.
