Microsoft to open source Chakra Javascript engine

Microsoft Edge, the browser that comes packed with all Windows 10 versions, will have its JavaScript core engine open-sourced in a surprising announcement that comes from the Redmond company.

While Chakra is at the core of only the Edge browser, it s used across Windows 10 to power Universal Applications on Xbox, Windows Phone and tablets. Since then, Chakra has evolved, which has resulted in ChakraCore, a self-contained JavaScript virtual machine that can be embedded into products and applications that require scriptability such as NoSQL database, productivity software and game engines.

ChakraCore can stand on its own and is not dependent on components in the Edge browser in order to parse, interpret, compile or execute JavaScript. This commitment led to initiatives like the new Microsoft Edge Dev site, Platform Status, and User Voice to foster a two-way dialog between the Microsoft Edge team and the community. It also rewrote the old COM-based diagnostic APIs, providing diagnostics which are “platform agnostic and could be standardised or made interoperable across different implementations”.

This is so, because Microsoft wants to keep ChakraCore and its open source development truly open and also keep Chakra (one that is tied down to Windows 10) away from the risks. Watch out for the code on Microsoft’s GitHub page in January. In a recent announcement, they have furthered this by making a key component of their latest browser-the part responsible for running JavaScript code-open to external development. While the initial release of ChakraCore will be Windows-only, Microsoft is expecting it to go beyond Windows. Microsoft is looking for contributors who will clone the repository, inspect the code and contribute new functionality for testing or fixing bugs.

Microsoft will open up its Chakra JavaScript engine as an open-source project on GitHub next month. The company added that it will also welcome suggestions on how to improve the project for scenarios important to particular businesses.

And by sharing the code for Chakra, browser developers at Apple, Google and Mozilla can learn from Microsoft’s approach and potentially improve their own JavaScript rendering engines.