Recently the Node.js Foundation announced that Mozilla is joining forces with IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and NodeSource on the Node.js API. So what’s Mozilla doing with Node? Actually, a few things…

You may already know about SpiderNode, a Node.js implementation on SpiderMonkey, which Ehsan Akhgari announced in April. Ehsan, Trevor Saunders, Brendan Dahl, and other contributors have since made a bunch of progress on it, and it now builds successfully on Mac and Linux and runs some Node.js programs.

Brendan additionally did the heavy lifting to build SpiderNode as a static library, link it with Positron, and integrate it with Positron’s main process, improving that framework’s support for running Electron apps. He’s now looking at opportunities to expose SpiderNode to WebExtensions and to chrome code in Firefox.

Meanwhile, I’ve been analyzing the Node.js API being developed by the API Working Group, and I’ve also been considering opportunities to productize SpiderNode for Node developers who want to use emerging JavaScript features in SpiderMonkey, such as WebAssembly and Shared Memory.

If you’re a WebExtension developer or Firefox engineer, would you use Node APIs if they were available to you? If you’re a Node programmer, would you use a Node implementation running on SpiderMonkey? And if so, would you require Node.js Addons (i.e. native modules) to do so?

Also published on Medium.