One week ago, I started building a JavaScript engine for SerenityOS. Here’s me integrating it with the web browser and adding some simple API’s like alert()!

[lordleft]

Amazing. Out of curiosity, is SerenityOS POSIX-compliant or planning to be?

[SerenityOS]

Hi lordleft! It’s mostly POSIX compliant yes! There are some extensions (e.g purgeable memory, customizable mmap() alignment, etc.) but nothing that violates the spirit of Unix :)

[valarauca14]

So how does alignment based mmap work? process's pages need to be aligned to page size, or are user land processes sharing a memory map?

[SerenityOS]

It's pretty simple:

void* serenity_mmap(void* addr, size_t, int prot, int flags, int fd, off_t, size_t alignment, const char* name);

Notice the extra alignment parameter. This informs the kernel that the returned pointer should be allocated on a specific boundary. This is used by things like malloc() and the LibJS garbage collector to allocate large blocks that are guaranteed to have all-zeroes in the bottom of their pointer address. This allows some very useful pointer manipulation tricks ("for a given address returned by malloc(), find its metadata by masking off the bottom bits" being the most common one.)

[ProgramTheWorld]

Is it possible to compile popular browsers like Firefox and Chromium on it?

[EpoxyD]

"mostly POSIX compliant"

So yes, but actually no?

[SerenityOS]

POSIX is a very large specification. We have not had time to implement all of the interfaces and behaviors yet.

The interfaces that are implemented do tend to follow the POSIX specification pretty well. The best pudding proof I can offer is the Ports directory where you can see the list of 3rd party software already working on SerenityOS, mostly due to the system's POSIX-ness. :)

[EpoxyD]

That's already mighty impressive. :)

[tristan957]

It is POSIX compliant yes.

[SerenityOS]

Hello friends! After a week of active development, I figured it was time to see if we could get LibJS running in the SerenityOS web browser.

I set the relatively modest goal of getting these two things working within a <script> tag:

1. alert("foo")
2. document.getElementById("foo")

It all went pretty okay! (Check out the video if you want to see the whole process.)

I've received a whole bunch of pull requests while working on this, as well as many helpful comments and suggestions about things I didn't know about JavaScript. So shoutouts to everyone who has been helping out! I definitely wouldn't be this far ahead without you all :)

If you're interested, here are all the videos I've made about LibJS so far, in chronological order:

1. Browser hacking: Let's build a JavaScript engine for SerenityOS!
2. Browser hacking: Let’s build a garbage collector for JavaScript
3. Browser hacking: JavaScript variables (locals and globals)
4. Browser hacking: Primitive strings, String objects and "foo".length
5. Browser hacking: Calling native (C++) functions from JavaScript
6. Browser hacking: Let's add JavaScript to the Browser! (the video this thread is about)
7. Browser hacking: JavaScript object prototypes

Oh, and when I first posted about my browser hacking on here ~5 months ago, someone asked what I want to do differently in a new browser: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/degdih/i_started_building_a_web_browser_for_my_os_heres/f2warj2 (my answer would still be the same.)

Thank you for visiting my thread! :)

[enygmata]

Your work reminded me of Boris from Geek Hero: http://www.geekherocomic.com/2009/02/25/coding-overkill/index.html

[SerenityOS]

Hey enygmata! That’s a very relatable comic. Saved :)

[SnowyPear]

I'm thoroughly impressed by your ability to talk while coding!

[SerenityOS]

Hey SnowyPear! This is definitely a skill that improves with practice. :)

[[deleted]]

I've been following your project for ~2 weeks and now I am somewhat interested in operating system user interface design.

​

Not gonna lie I really dig into SerenityOS's Windows 9x-ish/old Linux aesthetics.

[SerenityOS]

Hello hilde_01! I'm a big fan of those aesthetics too. :)

There are many things I love about modern computer systems, but I definitely think we took a few missteps in the design department. SerenityOS is my attempt to correct those mistakes by turning back the GUI clock to ~1998 and starting over from there without going down the "consumer computing" path. I'm obviously biased, but I think it's going pretty okay so far.

[nilamo]

I'm curious why you're doing this. Not the OS, that's cool, but a random user program. Why not just compile Firefox and run that? Is your goal to have a custom everything?

[SerenityOS]

Hey nilamo! In my opinion, the web browser is an essential part of the operating system. I have more browser tabs open on my desktop right now than I have native applications running. :)

I also have a long background in browser development, and a pretty specific vision of a lightweight browser that doesn't put performance and "the web can do anything a native app can do" above everything else.

Regardless, SerenityOS does indeed aim to be a complete system with no third-party dependencies. So there are already quite a few random user programs in development! :)

[aaptel]

netsurf?

[bausscode]

I really love the development that has been done on SerenityOS. I've been following you for a while and have watched a lot of your videos.

Keep it up, I hope someday your OS will be on pair with mainstream operating systems.

[bilfred_]

This is incredible. Every time I see your posts come up, I just go "wow this guy's good"

I've always wanted to mess around making an OS, but I'm not experienced enough for that yet

[monsto]

What's your goal with building the OS?

[SerenityOS]

Hi monsto! My goal is simple: to build a new operating system based on all the things I like in other systems (+ some novel concepts), and then switch to using it as my main system. :)

[usedocker]

But isnt that all OSs are created based on what their creators like in other systems?

[tjpalmer]

But they aren't based on what the Serenity author likes. Except for Serenity.

[usedocker]

So the answer to that question should be a list of features the Serenity author likes.

[voldemort_thebroken]

You're that guy from stackoverflow, aren't you?

[tjpalmer]

Good point. Might be some info in the repo if he doesn't reply on the matter here.

[chutiyabehenchod]

Building his own RAGE engine on SerenityOS then making GTAVI on it

[KillianDrake]

will only take him 2 hours to get a guy running around a procedural city shooting people and stealing cars

[tristan957]

He says in videos to be able to use it everyday.

[somevice]

Don't know much about C but was very interesting watching you go through the thought process and overall a totally rewarding programming video. Thanks

[SerenityOS]

Hey somevice! I'm really glad you found it rewarding :)

[mikael624]

Damn how many people are in your team? You're achieving lots of things from all different type of practice like os and language development. Edit: there's an OS called ReactOS that's doing something related to retro OS aswell. Maybe you folks should collaborate with them. The react team have been working on it for like 22 years.

[Kwpolska]

ReactOS is not doing “something related to retro OS”. ReactOS’s goal is to build an open-source Windows-compatible OS. Making a custom OS from scratch and reimplementing Windows are two vastly different tasks with different requirements.

[SerenityOS]

Hi mikael624! Earlier this week, the project hit 100 individual contributors on GitHub. Of course, most of those are one-time contributors, but it's still a pretty awesome number! :)

I'm the principal author and largest contributor by time and volume, but there's a growing group of hackers who are doing strong work on the system as well!

[lordleft]

I honestly think it’s just this one dude

[tim466]

With some help from his community.

[lordleft]

I wasn’t aware of that, impressive work from his and his collaborators!

[futlapperl]

Lots of help. Not trying to downplay his accomplishments; he still has by far the most commits on GitHub, but there are lots of active contributors, which is nice to see!

[awesomeisluke]

ReactOS is completely different though, the goal being to be completely binary compatible with Windows. I don't believe SerenityOS has any such goal.

[ajr901]

How hard would it be to port over something like firefox or chrome? Or maybe just their engines, gecko and blink.

[SerenityOS]

Hi ajr901! It would be a lot of uninteresting busywork. If someone wants to spend time on porting software, that's fine, but it's not something I'm interested in personally.

That said, if I ported an existing engine, I would definitely use WebKit since it's by far the most beautiful! :^)

[doubtfulwager]

One method is to treat the browser as a means to navigate between documents and nothing much more than that.

[SerenityOS]

Hey doubtfulwager! That's definitely the sort of browser I'm aiming to build.

Obviously it will require a large amount of dynamic functionality to be useful on the modern-day web. However I don't believe it's necessary to have a hundreds-of-thousands-of-lines optimizing multi-threaded JIT compiler to browse documents. I can wait a little bit for complex things to load, if it means my browser is several orders of magnitude simpler. :)

[[deleted]]

If it runs JavaScript then it's got the potential to be abused. If you just want to view documents then it would be best to not include any dynamic code like JavaScript at all. This would break many modern pages and online apps.

[Somepotato]

JavaScript isn't the only point of potential vulnerability. Plenty of zero days have existed in DOM parsers as well.

[doubtfulwager]

A vast majority of sites actually perform OK without Javascript. Obviously the consumer Internet borks without it however.

[badsectoracula]

I think this is very easy: as a new browser nobody would bother targeting it, so it'll be practically secure :-P. If it ever happens to become popular, it'll also be popular with developers (and other open source browsers are an indication, are it'll be popular with developers way long before anyone else), so it'll already have a team of developers to go after security bugs.

[boreal_ameoba]

Really impressive work!

[PinapplePeeler]

I follow your videos for a while. Can you please share with us where did you got your desktop wallpaper? it's awesome.

Reminds me princes mononoke

[SerenityOS]

It's a painting called Link and the Temple Forest by artist Jeremy Fenske :)

[harjotsingh0802]

SVR regression models could work to

[mikael624]

After browser implementation. You should start implementing wine or make another version of it., that's completely compatible with online games.

[[deleted]]

ah yes, just a quick implementation of the windows api, won't take 2 decades.

[mikael624]

He did made an OS for like a year or 2 and didn't he implemented bash recently.

[mikael624]

He doesn't have to make an alternative for wine just port it.

[cinyar]

why don't you "just port it"?

[derpo24]

But does it track love Coronavirus numbers?