tag:tenfourfox.tenderapp.com,2012-01-07:/discussions/questions/757-tenfourfox-javascript-innovation-seeping-back-into-firefoxTenFourFox: Discussion 2014-03-11T03:20:44Ztag:tenfourfox.tenderapp.com,2012-01-07:Comment/320261662014-03-11T02:17:55Z2014-03-11T02:17:55ZTenfourfox Javascript innovation seeping back into Firefox?<div><p>Short answer: Eventually, but Linux has important differences
that will cause it to not "just work" -- someone else would need to
finish it.</p>
<p>Long answer: Yes, our JavaScript compiler makes a substantial
performance difference on some sites. However, not all PowerPC
implementations use the same interface to the operating system; OS
X's has some important differences to Linux, and code generators
have to be adjusted. I don't run Linux/ppc personally, so someone
would need to adjust it, which should not be difficult but is not
trivial. Just adding our code to Firefox on Linux/ppc would not
solve this problem without further work.</p>
<p>Also, once we submit our code back to Mozilla, we lose a certain
amount of control over it, which will impair development. The
JavaScript compiler is under major construction and having Mozilla
gatekeep code review will significantly slow our work. I'd rather
do this when I have something fully operational and mostly
optimized, and that would be easily months away or more.</p>
<p>We do share our work upstream when we feel it benefits the
larger PowerPC community. For example, some of our AltiVec
acceleration is already part of Firefox on PowerPC platforms, and
we routinely fix endian problems that affect us and others. This
project has larger benefit too, and I plan to contribute it as
well, but it would still need a technically skilled sort to put the
final piece in for Linux.</p></div>Cameron Kaisertag:tenfourfox.tenderapp.com,2012-01-07:Comment/320261662014-03-11T02:19:41Z2014-03-11T02:19:41ZTenfourfox Javascript innovation seeping back into Firefox?<div><p>By the way, you can get some idea of the difference for sites
you visit by comparing SeaMonkeyPPC, which does not have JavaScript
acceleration, to TenFourFox. If the sites you visit seem to work
fine in SeaMonkeyPPC, then they will almost certainly work as well,
if not better, in Firefox on Linux. If they are slower or you get
script errors, then you know where the problem lies.</p></div>Cameron Kaisertag:tenfourfox.tenderapp.com,2012-01-07:Comment/320261662014-03-11T03:20:39Z2014-03-11T03:20:43ZTenfourfox Javascript innovation seeping back into Firefox?<div><p>That's very helpful, thank you. And thanks for contributing work
back - I know it's slow going with big projects, but eventually
these PPC machines will be "so old" that they'll need the 2017
version of Crunchbang or whatever to keep up. :(</p></div>Gordon M