SpiderMonkey

This article is about the software. For the primate, see Spider monkey. For other uses, see Spider monkey (disambiguation).

SpiderMonkey is an open-source JavaScript and WebAssembly engine by the Mozilla Foundation.^[4]

SpiderMonkey

Developer(s)	Mozilla Foundation Mozilla Corporation
Repository	github.com/mozilla-spidermonkey
Written in	C, C++, Rust
Operating system	Cross-platform
Platform	IA-32, x86-64, ARM, MIPS, SPARC,^[1] RISC-V^[2]
Type	JavaScript and WebAssembly engine
License	MPL 2.0^[3]
Website	spidermonkey.dev

It is the first JavaScript engine, written by Brendan Eich at Netscape Communications, and later released as open source and currently maintained by the Mozilla Foundation. It is used in the Firefox web browser.

History

Eich "wrote JavaScript in ten days" in 1995,^[5] having been "recruited to Netscape with the promise of 'doing Scheme' in the browser".^[6] (The idea of using Scheme was abandoned when "engineering management [decided] that the language must 'look like Java'".)^[6] In late 1996, Eich, needing to "pay off [the] substantial technical debt" left from the first year, "stayed home for two weeks to rewrite Mocha as the codebase that became known as SpiderMonkey".^[5] (Mocha was the original working name for the language.)^[6][7] In 2011, Eich transferred management of the SpiderMonkey code to Dave Mandelin.^[5]

Versions

SpiderMonkey version history

Version	Release date	Corresponding ECMAScript version	Browser version	Added functionality
Old version, no longer maintained: 1.0	March 1996		Netscape Navigator 2.0
Old version, no longer maintained: 1.1	August 1996		Netscape Navigator 3.0
Old version, no longer maintained: 1.2	June 1997		Netscape Navigator 4.0 - 4.05
Old version, no longer maintained: 1.3	October 1998	ECMA-262 1st + 2nd edition	Netscape Navigator 4.06-4.7x
Old version, no longer maintained: 1.4			Netscape Server
Old version, no longer maintained: 1.5	November 2000	ECMA-262 3rd edition	Netscape Navigator 6, Firefox 1.0
Old version, no longer maintained: 1.6	November 2005^[8]		Firefox 1.5	additional array methods, array and string generics, E4X
Old version, no longer maintained: 1.7	October 2006		Firefox 2.0	iterators and generators, let statement, array comprehensions, destructuring assignment
Old version, no longer maintained: 1.8	June 2008		Firefox 3.0	generator expressions, expression closures
Old version, no longer maintained: 1.8.5	March 2011	ECMA-262 5th edition	Firefox 4.0	JSON support
Old version, no longer maintained: 1.8.8	January 2012		Firefox 10.0
Old version, no longer maintained: 17	November 2012		Firefox 17.0
Old version, no longer maintained: 24	September 2013		Firefox 24.0
Old version, no longer maintained: 31	July 2014		Firefox 31.0
Old version, no longer maintained: 38	May 2015		Firefox 38.0
Old version, no longer maintained: 45	March 2016		Firefox 45.0
Old version, no longer maintained: 52	March 2017		Firefox 52.0
Old version, no longer maintained: 60	May 2018		Firefox 60.0
Old version, no longer maintained: 68	July 2019		Firefox 68.0
Old version, no longer maintained: 78	June 2020		Firefox 78.0
Old version, no longer maintained: 91	August 2021		Firefox 91.0
Old version, no longer maintained: 102	June 2022		Firefox 102.0
Current stable version: 103	July 2022		Firefox 103.0

Standards

SpiderMonkey implements the ECMA-262 specification (ECMAScript). ECMA-357 (ECMAScript for XML (E4X)) was dropped in early 2013.^[9]

Internals

SpiderMonkey is written in C/C++ and contains an interpreter, the IonMonkey JIT compiler, and a garbage collector.

TraceMonkey

TraceMonkey^[10] was the first JIT compiler written for the JavaScript language. Initially introduced as an option in a beta release and introduced in Brendan Eich's blog on August 23, 2008,^[11] the compiler became part of the mainline release as part of SpiderMonkey in Firefox 3.5, providing "performance improvements ranging between 20 and 40 times faster" than the baseline interpreter in Firefox 3.^[12]

Instead of compiling whole functions, TraceMonkey was a tracing JIT, which operates by recording control flow and data types during interpreter execution. This data then informed the construction of trace trees, highly specialized paths of native code.

Improvements to JägerMonkey eventually made TraceMonkey obsolete, especially with the development of the SpiderMonkey type inference engine. TraceMonkey is absent from SpiderMonkey from Firefox 11 onward.^[13]

JägerMonkey

JägerMonkey, internally named MethodJIT, was a whole-method JIT compiler designed to improve performance in cases where TraceMonkey could not generate stable native code.^[14][15] It was first released in Firefox 4 and eventually entirely supplanted TraceMonkey. It has itself been replaced by IonMonkey.

JägerMonkey operated very differently from other compilers in its class: while typical compilers worked by constructing and optimizing a control-flow graph representing the function, JägerMonkey instead operated by iterating linearly forward through SpiderMonkey bytecode, the internal function representation. Although this prohibits optimizations that require instruction reordering, JägerMonkey compiling has the advantage of being very fast, which is useful for JavaScript since recompiling due to changing variable types is frequent.

Mozilla implemented a number of critical optimizations in JägerMonkey, most importantly polymorphic inline caches and type inference.^[16]

The difference between TraceMonkey and JägerMonkey JIT techniques and the need for both was explained in a hacks.mozilla.org article. A more in-depth explanation of the technical details was provided by Chris Leary, one of SpiderMonkey's developers, in a blog post Archived 9 December 2012 at archive.today. More technical information can be found in other developer's blogs: dvander, .

IonMonkey

IonMonkey was a JavaScript JIT compiler of Mozilla, which was aimed to enable many new optimizations that were impossible with the prior JägerMonkey architecture.^[17]

IonMonkey was a more traditional compiler: it translated SpiderMonkey bytecode into a control-flow graph, using static single assignment form (SSA) for the intermediate representation. This architecture enabled well-known optimizations from other programming languages to be used for JavaScript, including type specialization, function inlining, linear-scan register allocation, dead code elimination, and loop-invariant code motion.^[18]

The compiler can emit fast native code translations of JavaScript functions on the ARM, x86, and x86-64 platforms. It has been the default engine since Firefox 18.^[19]

OdinMonkey

OdinMonkey is the name of Mozilla's new optimization module for asm.js, an easily compilable subset of JavaScript. OdinMonkey itself is not a JIT compiler, it uses the current JIT compiler. It's included with Firefox from release 22.

WarpMonkey

The WarpMonkey JIT replaces the former IonMonkey engine from version 83.^[20] It is able to inline other scripts and specialize code based on the data and arguments being processed. It translates the bytecode and Inline Cache data into a Mid-level Intermediate Representation (Ion MIR) representation. This graph is transformed and optimized before being lowered to a Low-level Intermediate Representation (Ion LIR). This LIR performs register allocation and then generates native machine code in a process called Code Generation. The optimizations here assume that a script continues to see data similar what has been seen before. The Baseline JITs are essential to success here because they generate ICs that match observed data. If after a script is compiled with Warp, it encounters data that it is not prepared to handle it performs a bailout. The bailout mechanism reconstructs the native machine stack frame to match the layout used by the Baseline Interpreter and then branches to that interpreter as though we were running it all along. Building this stack frame may use special side-table saved by Warp to reconstruct values that are not otherwise available.^[21]

Use

SpiderMonkey is intended to be embedded in other applications that provide host environments for JavaScript. An incomplete list follows:

• Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, and other applications that use the Mozilla application framework
  • Forks of Firefox including the Pale Moon, Basilisk and Waterfox web browsers.
• Data storage applications:
  • MongoDB moved from V8 to SpiderMonkey in version 3.2^[22]
  • Riak uses SpiderMonkey as the runtime for JavaScript MapReduce operations^[23]
  • CouchDB database system (written in Erlang). JavaScript is used for defining maps, filters, reduce functions and viewing data, for example in HTML format.
• Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash Professional, and Adobe Dreamweaver. Adobe Acrobat DC uses Spidermonkey 24.2 with ECMA-357 support forward ported.^[24]
• GNOME desktop environment, version 3 and later
• Yahoo! Widgets, formerly named Konfabulator
• FreeSWITCH, open-source telephony engine, uses SpiderMonkey to allow users to write call management scripts in JavaScript
• PythonMonkey uses SpiderMonkey to allow users to write programs where JavaScript and Python functions, types, and events interoperate and (where possible) share memory storage. ^[25]
• The text-based web browser ELinks uses SpiderMonkey to support JavaScript^[26]
• Parts of SpiderMonkey are used in the Wine project's JScript (re-)implementation^[27]
• Synchronet, a BBS, e-mail, Web, and application server using the SpiderMonkey engine
• JavaScript OSA, a SpiderMonkey inter-process communication language for the Mac computer
• 0 A.D., a real-time strategy game
• Wasmer has incorporated SpiderMonkey into their WinterJS open-source project; a JavaScript runtime environment.
• SpiderMonkey is also used in many other open-source projects; an external list is maintained at Mozilla's developer site.^[28]

SpiderMonkey includes a JavaScript Shell for interactive JavaScript development and for command-line invocation of JavaScript program files.^[29]

See also

•  Free and open-source software portal

• Rhino (JavaScript engine)
• List of ECMAScript engines

References

1. "1.8.8 – SpiderMonkey | MDN". Developer.mozilla.org. 10 January 2013. from the original on 2 May 2013. Retrieved 21 March 2013.
2. "SpiderMonkey Newsletter (Firefox 110-111)". spidermonkey.dev. 16 February 2023. Retrieved 27 December 2023.
3. Mozilla Licensing Policies, mozilla.org, from the original on 2 April 2013, retrieved 26 March 2013
4. "Home". SpiderMonkey JavaScript/WebAssembly Engine. Retrieved 24 April 2023.
5. Eich, Brendan (21 June 2011). "New JavaScript Engine Module Owner". BrendanEich.com. from the original on 14 July 2011. Retrieved 1 July 2011.
6. Eich, Brendan (3 April 2008). "Popularity". BrendanEich.com. from the original on 3 July 2011. Retrieved 1 July 2011.
7. Eich, Brendan (19 August 2011). "Mapping the Monkeysphere". from the original on 13 January 2013. Retrieved 19 August 2011.
8. . Archived from the original on 5 September 2015. Retrieved 28 July 2015.
9. "759422 – Remove use of e4x in account creation". Retrieved 5 February 2013.
10. "JavaScript:TraceMonkey, MozillaWiki". Retrieved 22 July 2020.
11. "TraceMonkey: JavaScript Lightspeed, Brendan Eich's Blog". Retrieved 22 July 2020.
12. Paul, Ryan (22 August 2008). "Firefox to get massive JavaScript performance boost". Ars Technica. from the original on 6 May 2012. Retrieved 21 March 2013.
13. Nethercote, Nicholas (1 November 2011). "SpiderMonkey is on a diet | Nicholas Nethercote". Blog.mozilla.com. from the original on 28 March 2012. Retrieved 21 March 2013.
14. "JaegerMonkey – Fast JavaScript, Always! » Mystery Bail Theater". Bailopan.net. 26 February 2010. from the original on 24 March 2013. Retrieved 21 March 2013.
15. Paul, Ryan (9 March 2010). "Mozilla borrows from WebKit to build fast new JS engine". Ars Technica. from the original on 16 April 2012. Retrieved 21 March 2013.
16. "JaegerMonkey - MozillaWiki". Wiki.mozilla.org. from the original on 23 August 2013. Retrieved 21 March 2013.
17. "Platform/Features/IonMonkey - MozillaWiki". Wiki.mozilla.org. 11 February 2013. from the original on 8 March 2013. Retrieved 21 March 2013.
18. "IonMonkey: Mozilla's new JavaScript JIT compiler". Infoq.com. from the original on 8 December 2012. Retrieved 21 March 2013.
19. "Firefox Notes - Desktop". Mozilla.org. 8 January 2013. from the original on 2 September 2014. Retrieved 21 March 2013.
20. "Warp: Improved JS performance in Firefox 83 – Mozilla Hacks - the Web developer blog". Mozilla Hacks – the Web developer blog. 13 November 2020. Retrieved 28 August 2021.
21. "SpiderMonkey — Firefox Source Docs documentation". firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org. Retrieved 28 August 2021.
22. "JavaScript Changes in MongoDB 3.2 — MongoDB Manual 3.4". from the original on 6 June 2017. Retrieved 23 November 2016.
23. "The Release Riak 0.8 and JavaScript Map/Reduce". from the original on 3 November 2011. Retrieved 24 April 2011.
24. "Acrobat DC SDK Documentation". helpx.adobe.com. Retrieved 5 November 2021.
25. "Distributive-Network/PythonMonkey: A Mozilla SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine embedded into the Python VM, using the Python engine to provide the JS host environment". GitHub. 7 July 2023. Retrieved 10 July 2023.
26. Bolso, Erik Inge (8 March 2005). "2005 Text Mode Browser Roundup". Linux Journal. from the original on 15 March 2010. Retrieved 5 August 2010.
27. wine-cvs mailing list 7 February 2009 at the Wayback Machine, 16 September 2008: "jscript: Added regular expression compiler based on Mozilla regexp implementation"
28. "SpiderMonkey > FOSS". MDN Web Docs. Retrieved 2 April 2019.
29. . MDN. Mozilla Developer Network. 29 September 2010. Archived from the original on 29 June 2011. Retrieved 14 December 2010. The JavaScript shell is a command-line program included in the SpiderMonkey source distribution. [...] You can use it as an interactive shell [...] You can also pass in, on the command line, a JavaScript program file to run [...]

External links

• Official website  , SpiderMonkey (JavaScript-C) engine
• Firefox (and Spidermonkey) Release Calendar