[racket] Evaluating pict to string

On Apr 21, 2013, at 7:34 PM, Jason Yeo wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 9:26 AM, manu d <th3rac25 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I am trying to port TryClojure (https://github.com/Raynes/tryclojure), a
>> web-based REPL, to Racket.
> 
> Has anyone tried compiling Racket to JavaScript using emscripten?
> (https://github.com/kripken/emscripten)
> 
> This way, we don't need a server to evaluate the racket code.

This is a nifty idea, and I think that a bunch of people have given it at least 30 seconds of thought. Indeed, the author of Emscripten is at a desk about 3 meters from mine.

To the best of my knowledge, though, no one has spent serious time working on it.

I think this would get Very Interesting(™) in and around the JIT. IIRC, Racket uses GNU Lightning. Emscripten goes through LLVM. It would seem that turning the JIT off would be the best choice, but it would probably be terrible for performance. Also, I believe that all of the library interfaces would need to be paid attention to.

I think that Whalesong is probably a better focus for these efforts. In case you're not already familiar with it, it's a Racket-to-JS compiler written by Danny Yoo:

http://hashcollision.org/whalesong/

John