[Development] V8 on iOS

[Ian]

Hmmm, so from what I understand, there may be a bytecode backend for V8 at some 
point (for platforms like MIPS for example), but that work hasn't begun in any 
way other than "maybe some time in the future", and even if it was decided to 
implement that, it's quite some time off. 

AFAIK Apple blocks what they find out about, and lets the rest pass until 
someone complains or something bad happens. The big problems here are using 
private APIs (they do static analysis, so there are ways around that), and 
altering the application's provision (if they notice they will probably block 
on that regardless of how it's been changed). They don't appear to analyse the 
app at runtime, so I'm not sure how they would know about a 3rd party JIT (
apart from the provisioning). I'm not sure which actual JIT they use for their 
own stuff, but I'm pretty sure it's not available outside of their webkit 
implementation.

Guess the next step will be getting V8 to run at all on iOS (and finding a way 
of testing it without a platform plugin)...

Thanks for the input!

Thiago Macieira <thiago.macieira at intel.com> wrote:
(04/02/2012 14:06)

>On segunda-feira, 2 de abril de 2012 13.02.08, aaron.kennedy at nokia.com wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> On 02/04/2012, at 2:21 PM, ext Ian wrote:
>> > Chris,
>> > 
>> > Thanks for your answer. So, the low-down is that it's not (practically)
>> > possible to use QML without V8, and even if V8 did have a interpreter
>> > backend, it would be too slow to be useable? If so, I guess I'm going to
>> > have to find a way to get V8 working on iOS?
>> 
>> V8 with an interpreter backend would probably be fine.  However, V8 doesn't
>> have such a backend and writing one would be an enormous effort - akin to
>> one of their architecture ports.
>
>I estimated a 40k contribution to do that.
>
>> The key to getting V8 running on iOS will be executing writable pages.. 
>> Unless you can solve that - and in a way that keeps Apple happy if you ever
>> want to deploy such apps - everything else will be in vein.
>
>I don't think Apple will ever allow that. I don't think Apple will allow 
>executing any code that isn't loaded strictly from disk.
>
>-- 
>Thiago Macieira - thiago.macieira (AT) intel.com
>  Software Architect - Intel Open Source Technology Center
>     Intel Sweden AB - Registration Number: 556189-6027
>     Knarrarnäsgatan 15, 164 40 Kista, Stockholm, Sweden