Node.js on Linux, e5500 PowerPC (Freescale P5020)

[Raphael]

Hi

I'm in the process of evaluating a server side technology to build a new product from scratch. It must run on Linux, Win, OSX and on (Yocto-) Linux running on self-made hardware: An embedded system using Freescale P5020 PowerPC (and other CPUs out from that family).

While I would really like to use Node.js, I'm quite a bit concerned about the quality and availability of Node.js for PPC. I've searched the web and found the relevant GitHub repos for V8 and node for PPC. I also found the IBM node.js SDK (http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/nodesdk/) but I couldn't find any recent and reliable information about "current status" of the PPC port. Also, as I don't know how to ask questions to the PPC-Node.js guys, I'm writing to this mailing list. Is there anybody who can shed some light on questions like:

 - Will ALL relevant PPC related patches of Node and V8 (I know, this is not the V8 list, but V8 people may also read this list?) will be merged upstream? Or will they be "forks" for ever?
 - Is the current state of the PPC ports on GitHub production ready? (IBM seems to have 'production ready' versions - but the also mention that they send "most" patches to GitHub. How much is "most"?)
 - What's your advice/opinion about relying on Node.js for PPC? If I start programming with it today, it'd be nice if I have some degree of confidence that it'l continue to work the next 10 years. (I think I would have that confidence with Ruby on rails or Django/Python - can I have it for Node.js/PPC as well?)
 - Who out there is using Node.js on PPC? Is there a community?

Any hints, advices, opinions, etc. are highly appreciated!

Thanks,
Raphael

[Ben Noordhuis]

The PPC port was merged into upstream V8 about a week ago.

I can't really comment on its quality or stability but io.js (can't
speak for node.js) will probably roll out preliminary linux-ppc
support once the PPC port makes it into a stable V8 release. I expect
that will be in about a month or two from now.

Some cooperation from IBM is necessary (mostly for the hardware for
the continuous integration) but they were amenable to that, last time
it came up.

[Michael Dawson]

Contributing back the PPC port is a multi-step process so what is in the google V8 repositories is not yet complete.  The patch covering the next step is being reviewed in this issue  https://codereview.chromium.org/866843003/  which includes an overview of the remaining steps.  Our goal is to get all of our changes for v8 into the google repositories.

As we work to contribute our ports back, the repositories for node (https://github.com/andrewlow/node) and v8  (https://github.com/andrewlow/v8ppc) are the source for our production builds to which we apply some small tweaks such as adding additional support for problem determination tools.

In terms of support for embedded PowerPC chips, there is some work going in the community (for example issue
https://github.com/andrewlow/v8ppc/issues/119).

There is a community here: https://github.com/andrewlow/v8ppc/issues/119 where questions will go directly to the IBM Node/V8 team (including myself).   If you have any problems accessing that or submitting questions there, just respond in this thread and I'll give you my direct contact info.

[Raphael]

That sounds promising

Some cooperation from IBM is necessary (mostly for the hardware for
the continuous integration) but they were amenable to that, last time
it came up.

Ok, thanks for these information! I really appreciate that.

It sounds like there is some hope that (upstream) node/io.js will be available for PPC sometime soon... In that case, I'm going to test the current PPC-forks on a Freescale P5040 on Linux - hopeuflly it'll work out of the box ;-)

 

[Raphael]

That's great to hear! Thanks for the information and the work you're doing!

As we work to contribute our ports back, the repositories for node (https://github.com/andrewlow/node) and v8  (https://github.com/andrewlow/v8ppc) are the source for our production builds to which we apply some small tweaks such as adding additional support for problem determination tools.

In terms of support for embedded PowerPC chips, there is some work going in the community (for example issue
https://github.com/andrewlow/v8ppc/issues/119).

I've already found that. As we are as well using e500v2 (Freescale P2020) we may want to run node.js on that platform too.

There is a community here: https://github.com/andrewlow/v8ppc/issues/119 where questions will go directly to the IBM Node/V8 team (including myself).   If you have any problems accessing that or submitting questions there, just respond in this thread and I'll give you my direct contact info.

Is this really the right link? You mean I should ask questions to issue 119? Or did you mean I should open new issues when having questions?

[Michael Dawson]

Sorry cut and paste error on my part.  The community is here: https://groups.google.com/forum/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer#!msg/nodejs/hYcfcHaAVNg/OtVqopLz20oJ

You can ask general questions in the forum and is a good way to direct them to our IBM team.  Opening a new issue in the github is also a good way to start specific discussions on ppc port. 

[Michael Dawson]

Did it again.  The right link is:  https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/groups/community/node