Laundry list of todos

[ivankra]

Sketches of some ideas/improvements that may (or may not) be worth implementing. Moved out of repo's TODO.md.

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• [high] automated builds via github actions
  • make sure all dockerfiles point to master/lkgr-like
  • update.py to gen github workflows
  • lightweight bench
  • profile builds - time/space, optimize
• [high] rewrite dist.sh script in python and cleanup dockerfiles using it
  • COPY dist.py . at the end of build (or bind mount it), then RUN ./dist.py ... to publish a build artefact to dist with flags to tweak metadata
  • Should support publishing multiple build artefacts per dockerfile e.g. js-interpreter and js-interpreter_jsc, narcissus and parser/narcissus
  • Flags to tweak metadata
    • --dist_du="--exclude=*.pyc ..." / --dist_du_flags
    • --license_glob="LICENSE.*,xxx"
    • --summary=...
    • --version_cmd="$BINARY --version | grep ...", git describe --tags -> only at dist time
    • --eshost=<host type>
  • simplify the common task of creating a bash wrapper
    • --bash_wrapper="exec $SCRIPT_DIR/..."
  • record how exactly is binary supposed to be run as part of metadata
    • --repl / --repl_cmd="$BINARY repl" => "repl_cmd": "$BINARY ..."
    • --run_cmd="$BINARY eval ${MODULE:+--module} $FILE"
      • FILE if accepts only one
      • FILES if many, sharing global namespace
      • MODULE=1 if run as module
      • --run_timed_cmd="$BINARY --time $TIME $FILE" (only time VM, exclude compilation)
    • maybe command to get host runtime's info (JS/JVM/NET/Lua etc)
      • --host_version_cmd="echo node $(node -v)"
      • --host_version_cmd="echo luajit -v | grep ..."
  • auto detect intrinsics needed for bench/conformance/test262.
    • "instrinsics": {key: true/false/replacement snippet}
    • "$262": true
    • "console.log": true
    • "print": "console.log" (print, println, console.log)
    • "Date.now()": "(new Date()).getTime()"
    • performance.now: false
    • putstr, read(line), eval, scriptArgs, ...
• [high] test262
  • create "portable262" subset of tests that don't need any special runtime APIs, codegen them similarly to kangax
  • conformance/preludes/<engine>.js - full $262 definitions for complex cases
    • https://github.com/test262-fyi/data/tree/main/engines
    • https://github.com/tc39/eshost/blob/master/runtimes/
• engines: rename "Standard" to "(Target) Specification"
• clang/gcc variants: go over benchmark results and make the faster one the default variant. Check both archs, use cmp.py for detailed comparison, record compiler recommendation in .md or Dockerfile.
• docker/Makefile: make depend, and check-in depend file for review, split up base rule
• [med] cross compilation
  • define both arm64 and amd64 targets in Makefile, allow to cross compile using podman's qemu binfmt integration
  • ppc64 and riscv64 builds should be straightforward to implement now
  • riscv64 hoster: https://labs.scaleway.com/en/em-rv1/
  • add support for macOS containerization as alternative to docker/podman on macOS, it supports amd64 cross-compilation out of the box. complication: 32-bit dscriptcpp binary
• wasm platform:
  • dist/wasm/* builds
  • try different wasm runtimes to run them wazero wasmtime etc
• narcissus: vendor-in, add console.log() and multiple scripts command-line args
• hako: go embed wasm module, update to new repo
• js-interpreter_jsc, nashorn_ot - do something
• engine262_jsc launcher
• jscript via wine, download dll's via winetricks or something
• avx2 / -march=x86-64-v3. bench major engines to check improvement, and maybe just switch all/most x64 builds to it.
• make full-featured fully static builds the default? *_min/bench for size benchmarking
  • COPY libicu-static.sh ./ && ./libicu-static.sh
  • Generic ways to pass extra CFLAGS: wrapper, hack system gcc spec, clang's CCC_OVERRIDE_OPTIONS.
  • target triples beyond arm64/amd64; try *-musl for static builds
• /dist/runtimes
  • node, bun, deno symlinks
  • node_0.x - nvm install 0.x
  • cjs/gjs
• jszvu: esvu/jsvu equivalent
  • build from source on user's machine: docker, podman, buildah, macOS containerization
  • or fetch github build artifact
  • check builds from BASE=debian:stable and other releases
  • check compatibility of builds with non-debian distros; vs engines official builds
  • test running outside /dist, fix/document exceptions
  • version handling
• update.py
  • checkout and update repos, update loc
  • check for broken links
• bench
  • finally make use of timestamp_output to compute a score
  • try various strategies to reduce variance
    • variance.py report
    • interleaving runs
    • pin container to specific cores, podman --cpuset-cpus, set governor performance; script
    • more repetitions for higher variance engines/test
    • hetzner dedicated vm
  • https://github.com/WebKit/JetStream
  • https://github.com/quickjs-ng/benchmarks
• parsers / transpilers
  • expand and add transpilers
  • test parsers on conformance test suite, report results
  • test ES5 engines (mujs, duktape, node 0.x - nvm install 0, spidermonkey_1.8.5 etc) + transpilers on conformance test suite
• conformance
  • align filenames with test262
  • ensure every test has ": (OK|failed|exception)", check for all to detect dumb echos
  • verify unexpected OKs
  • ES1: this/inheritance/hoisting tests
  • ESnext permalinks
  • default strict mode fixes, bun/deno
  • github.io conformance.html: compat-table's original + transposed layout, toggleable loadable details, opt for speed
  • record tested revision+date+version at the top of Conformance section in engine/*.md
  • run.sh 'engine [--flags]' <paths relative to conformance directory or absolute paths or ./relative-to-cwd>