V8 version 0.5: typed arrays and sql.js
February 15, 2015
Earlier this month, V8 version 0.5 appeared on CRAN. This version adds support typed arrays as specified in ECMA 6 in order to support high performance computing and libraries compiled with emscripten. A big thanks goes to Kenton Russell (@timelyportfolio) for suggesting these features.
Example: sql.js
These new features increase the amount of JavaScript libraries that will run out-of-the-box on V8. For example, sql.js is a port of SQLite to JavaScript, by compiling the SQLite C code with Emscripten:
More V8 fun
Several other examples are available on gist, for example cheerio (html parsing), turf.js (geojson), viz.js and KaTeX. I am working on several packages that implement actual bindings to JavaScript libraries using V8. The first ones have just landed on CRAN: minimist and js.
To learn more, have a look at the vignettes: