I am planning to do practice some javascript programming at the console rather than embedded in a web page. My main system runs windows so it does support jscript in the windows scripting host. However, I want something better than what windows provides. One of the possibilities was Google’s V8 interpreter, the fastest javascript interpreter today. However, it only available in source code and requires compiling. The problem is it not easy to compile using MinGW or Digital Mars, as the source code is generally targeted for production on a linux environment. I tried searching for compiled binaries but no luck finding any and I have no desire to run two platforms to achieve my ends. However when I am on linux, there no such problem. But when I am on windows I want to have the same benefits of when I am on linux. The second choice was what is available from Mozilla, two products, Rhino and Spidermonkey. Rhino was pretty easy to setup but it is a java application, it will run on any system with a java runtime. However, I wanted something to run natively. Spidermonkey like V8 runs natively, however I was beginning to face the same level of complexity with V8. However, there were a few resources online that detailed all the steps in developing a windows binary, including installing some Mozilla specific support files etc. So it was looking like I was going to have to go down that path to get a javascript interpreter. That is, until, I found a website, which did have a compiled version of spidermonkey. A sigh of relief and I clicked the download. Opened the archive, which included three files, a text file listing command line options, the binary and a support DLL. I copied them into my windows directory so they be available to me wherever directory my command line is in.
Mission accomplished.
Mistake: I didn’t bookmark the website I found it…. lol.