Running V8 Javascript Engine Standalone

V8 is easy to build and does not come with the Java VM overhead from Mozilla's standalone Javascript interpreter. Luckily, V8 ships with code for building a console. Here is how to build this:

$> svn co http://v8.googlecode.com/svn/trunk v8-trunk...$> cd v8-trunk$> scons$> g++ ./samples/shell.cc -o v8-shell -I include libv8.a 

Now, we have a standalone binary called v8-shell.

Running the console:

$> ./v8-shell V8 version 2.0.2> var x = 10;> x10> function foo(x) { return x * x; }> foofunction foo(x) { return x * x; }> quit()

Executing Javascript from the command line:

$> ./v8-shell -e 'print("10*10 = " + 10*10)'10*10 = 100

Many more features are documented in the help:

$> ./v8-shell --helpUsage:...

To build the developer console, rather than the example 'shell' toy application, copy-paste the below commands to your terminal.

sudo apt-get install subversion scons libreadline-devsvn co http://v8.googlecode.com/svn/trunk v8cd v8/scons console=readline d8

These instruction will work for Ubuntu/Debian with a "generic" kernel. For other distributions, you will need to replace the apt-get command with whatever package tool you have available. On 64-bit systems you may need to add arch=x64. The console=readline option enables the readline system, to make it feel a bit more like a standard shell.

More complete documentation here:http://code.google.com/apis/v8/build.html

Note:

See also: Building v8 with GYP

How about running V8 Javascript via command line using node.js?

node.js uses v8 as it's engine and adds a lot of functionality on top of it.

For example on Mac OSX if you have Homebrew installed, simply issue:

    $ brew install node    $ node    >