Neko versus Tamarin

Hello:

I was reading about Mozilla's new Tamarin project 
(http://www.m
ozilla.org/projects/tamarin/), which is based on source

code from Adobe's AVM2.  The goal is an implementation of
ECMAScript 4th 
edition; currently, there's a VM and a prototype compiler
written in 
ECMAScript itself.  So I wonder how this VM compares to
Neko.  Since the 
VM is designed for a dynamically typed language with
optional static 
typing, wouldn't it be possible for other dynamic languages
to target 
this VM?  Aside from the fact that Tamarin is still in early

development, what advantages does Neko have?

Thanks,
Matt

-- 
Neko : One VM to run them all
(http://nekovm.org)

Matt Campbell a écrit :
> Hello:
> 
> I was reading about Mozilla's new Tamarin project 
> (http://www.m
ozilla.org/projects/tamarin/), which is based on source

> code from Adobe's AVM2.  The goal is an implementation
of ECMAScript 4th 
> edition; currently, there's a VM and a prototype
compiler written in 
> ECMAScript itself.  So I wonder how this VM compares to
Neko.  Since the 
> VM is designed for a dynamically typed language with
optional static 
> typing, wouldn't it be possible for other dynamic
languages to target 
> this VM?  Aside from the fact that Tamarin is still in
early 
> development, what advantages does Neko have?

I have been studying closely the AVM2 since haXe (http://haxe.org) 
target it with compiling for Flash9. Its design is quite
similar to the 
JavaVM, with additional dynamic opcodes.

It's based on a class model with a classic OO typesystem,
and is then a 
lot more difficult to target than Neko if your typesystem
does not match 
the ActionScript3 one. Also, performances are good when
methods are 
fully annotated but are not very good when used dynamicly.

Main advantages of Neko are its lightweight, speed,
customization, its 
ability to be easily extensible through dynamic libraries,
and the 
availabily of a complete set of standard libraries
(filesystem, network, 
database, threads...).

Also, Neko has not been designed to run a particular
language, it can 
then be adapted for many different languages.

Nicolas


-- 
Neko : One VM to run them all
(http://nekovm.org)

On Sun, 2007-08-19 at 14:10 +0200, Nicolas Cannasse wrote:

> Also, Neko has not been designed to run a particular
language, it can 
> then be adapted for many different languages.

This probably isn't entirely the right view of it. I would
say
Neko was designed to be *at least* able to compile an SML
like
language, meaning it can support procedural and function
code
well. This is because it was designed by someone with
knowledge
of advanced languages. Whereas the VM out there were
typically
designed by people hooked on OO.


-- 
John Skaller <skaller at users dot sf dot net>
Felix, successor to C++: http://felix.sf.net

-- 
Neko : One VM to run them all
(http://nekovm.org)