PowerlangJS: A Quick Way to Get Your Smalltalk to the Web?

Javier Pimás

Keywords: virtual machines, transpilation, javascript

TL;DR: A general technique to create a JavaScript-based VM for any Smalltalk implementation. We propose generating Smalltalk VMs that run on top of JavaScript by transpiling Smalltalk evaluators written in Smalltalk into JavaScript.

Abstract:

Powerlang bootstrapper was designed to bring alive Smalltalk systems from specifications stored in source code files.
Powerlang includes an evaluator that is able to execute initialization code of the Smalltalk being bootstrapped. Could we use that same evaluator for running that same Smalltalk on the Web?
We present our work in progress towards that goal, which involves transpiling the Smalltalk evaluator, written in Smalltalk, to JavaScript, generating a Smalltalk image compatible with that evaluator, and optimizing the evaluator and the Smalltalk code of the image.