Boa (JavaScript engine)

Boa is an open-source JavaScript engine written in Rust.[2] Boa was introduced at JSConf EU 2019 by Jason Williams.[3][4]

Boa
Original author(s)Jason Williams
Developer(s)Boa Developers
Initial release10 June 2019; 5 years ago (2019-06-10)
Stable release
v0.19[1] / 9 July 2024; 3 months ago (2024-07-09) /  ()
Repositorygithub.com/boa-dev/boa
Written inRust[2]
Platformx86-64, 32-bit ARM, AArch64
TypeJavaScript and WebAssembly engine
LicenseMIT
Websiteboajs.dev

Williams created Boa in 2017 after working on Servo and being inspired by the "written from scratch" CSS engine.[5][4] He was eager to work on a JavaScript engine using Rust to learn more about how JavaScript implementations work, since then the project has had over 100 contributors.[3][6] Overtime the engine gained more prominent features such as bytecode compilation,[7] better conformance to the specification and ergonomic API design.[1]

Design

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Boa is an open-source implementation of a JavaScript execution engine. The project is developed as a Rust library for embedding the JavaScript engine in Rust applications. Additionally, the authors of Boa provide a command-line interface (CLI) for users to interact with Boa as standalone JavaScript interpreter accessible from a command line.[8]

Boa follows the common interpreter design which approximately consists of a lexer, parser, compiler and bytecode interpreter[8]

Standards

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Boa implements the ECMA-262 specification (ECMAScript). As of 6 September 2024 Boa has 88% conformance to Test262[9]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b "Boa release v0.19". boajs.dev. 9 July 2024.
  2. ^ a b "About Boa | Boa JS". boajs.dev. Boa Developers. Retrieved 15 October 2024.
  3. ^ a b Williams, Jason (20 June 2019). "Let's build a JavaScript Engine in Rust by Jason Williams - JSConf EU 2019". YouTube. JS Conf EU. Retrieved 15 October 2024.
  4. ^ a b Jason Williams. "Let's build a JavaScript Engine". 2019.jsconf.eu. JS Conf EU. Archived from the original on 25 February 2024. Retrieved 25 February 2024.
  5. ^ "Hacking & Contributing to Servo On Windows – Mozilla Hacks - the Web developer blog". Mozilla Hacks – the Web developer blog.
  6. ^ "Contributors to boa-dev/boa". GitHub.
  7. ^ "Boa release v0.14". boajs.dev. 15 March 2022.
  8. ^ a b Munsters, Aäron. "BoaSpect" (PDF). Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Retrieved 15 October 2024.
  9. ^ "test262.fyi". test262.fyi. 6 September 2024. Archived from the original on 6 September 2024. Retrieved 6 September 2024.