Microsoft announced today the release of a new preview version of its Node-ChakraCore engine, based on Node.js 8 and having full support for the Node API (N-API).
Posted on GitHub two days ago, the new preview version, bumped up to v8.2.1, brings some important improvements to the platform, with Microsoft now touting full cross-platform support for JIT compilation, and claiming feature parity among all desktop operating systems.
However, the company is quick to point out that while cross-platform stability has been achieved, there’s still a lot of work to be done in terms of module support, and performance across systems.
The new preview version also brings full support for the next generation N-API, providing ABI compatibility across Node versions. In theory, with ChakraCore and N-API support developers should have an easier time maintaining, or rather not need to maintain, different versions of their code for different flavors of Node.
Microsoft also highlighted in a blog post some interesting milestones achieved over the past year, not least of which being the limited available of Node.js on iOS thanks to ChakraCore. By disabling JIT compilation when needed, ChakraCore allows the Node interpreter to run on iOS and doesn't fall foul of the system’s restrictions.
The company says it’s focused on performance improvements across all platforms over the next six months, and together with the wider Node.js community it’s looking at module compatibility and improving its Time-Travel debugging tools.
Source: Microsoft
