This is pretty cool! I'm curious if emscripten/webassembly on the canonical git implementation was considered though? (Or is the environment just too different?)
A pure JavaScript implementation of Git for Node and browsers
81–90 of 203 posts
Re: A pure JavaScript implementation of Git for Node and browsers
#82Linus Torvalds would hate this
Why? It’s a clever hack.
They did it because they can.
Re: A pure JavaScript implementation of Git for Node and browsers
#83I think it's interesting how there's two phenomena that seem to be related to me that get posted here and seem to get treated with different responses. One the one hand, we have software originally written in C/C++ being rewritten in Rust (not often, sometimes just conceptualized), and there's often a real push back by some people about how it's a waste and not useful. On the other, we have software rewritten in Java…
IMO, this is because there's a general attitude about porting to Rust that porting to Rust, by itself, makes a material improvement in the quality of the software (e.g. reliability, performance, readability), and that these improvements that can't be achieved in C/C++. Entrenched C developers then rise to the debate to defend their language. This debate has happened often enough that any time someone ports something…
Javascript runs everywhere where there is a browser.
Rust runs everywhere where there is a c compiler, which is funnily enough the sample places that C/C++ run.
Re: A pure JavaScript implementation of Git for Node and browsers
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's hope that the current "let's rewrite xxxyyyy in JavaScript" will soon be "let's rewrite it in webassembly". This makes much more sense to me.
You don't rewrite in wasm, you compile to it.
Correct. And you can use different languages not just JS.
Re: A pure JavaScript implementation of Git for Node and browsers
#85Re: A pure JavaScript implementation of Git for Node and browsers
#86Re: A pure JavaScript implementation of Git for Node and browsers
#87Re: A pure JavaScript implementation of Git for Node and browsers
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMO, this is because there's a general attitude about porting to Rust that porting to Rust, by itself, makes a material improvement in the quality of the software (e.g. reliability, performance, readability), and that these improvements that can't be achieved in C/C++. Entrenched C developers then rise to the debate to defend their language. This debate has happened often enough that any time someone ports something…
Javascript runs everywhere where there is a browser. Rust runs everywhere where there is a c compiler, which is funnily enough the sample places that C/C++ run.
And with wasm, Rust/C/C++ all can run in the browser too...
Re: A pure JavaScript implementation of Git for Node and browsers
#89This project started when I, wmhilton and another guy started talking on an issue on the js-git repository. Because development on js-git stopped. We all started independent projects to port Git to JS. The third guy did one in type script, wmhilton started this. I began by trying emscripten first with libgit2. While it compiled and simple things worked, I needed to overload its filesystem functionality but it was embedded and complex to do. At any case my git project stalled as I was stuck solving another related problem (indexing highly dynamic tree data). In the mean time wmhilton continued and produced a wonderful project. I talked him earlier on about the fs functionality, since earlier I developed the js-virtualfs to support a git in js. And later he changed the codebase to support fs plugins. So if you want to use this isomorphic-git in the browser or electron, I recommend my js-virtualfs library as its the most comprehensive port of nodes fs api to an in-memory fs. Thanks to wmhilton I can probably stop my git project and just build on top of his.
Re: A pure JavaScript implementation of Git for Node and browsers
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Javascript runs everywhere where there is a browser. Rust runs everywhere where there is a c compiler, which is funnily enough the sample places that C/C++ run.
And with wasm, Rust/C/C++ all can run in the browser too...
Not quite yet. But getting there.