Web Run-Time Environment
WRTE is a microkernel-like environment to run untrusted applications in your browser.
Try it live at http://wrte.cloud/
Kernel
The kernel provides following services to facilitate apps:
Processes
Untrusted apps run in iframe-sandbox + webworker jail limited as far as the browser allows. Kernel provides methods to spawn, manage and kill processes.
IPC
Inter-Process Communication mechanism allows exchanging messages between processes and processes and kernel. Messages can be sent in point-2-point manner or over two-way channels providing context and ordering.
VFS
Virtual File-System uses two previous facilities to build hierarchical, dynamic and persistent data access layer. Kernel provides mapping of paths to actual process handlers providing data content.
Hierarchy
WRTE paths consist of a volume name and path. i.e. volume:foo/bar
Volumes are mapped to programmatic handlers processing messages for a given path. Messages like READ, SEEK, INFO, etc.
There is also an assign
table, mapping parts of a path to another path.
For example con:
is usually an assign to internal:console
.
internal:
There are few handlers provided by the kernel itself, not by externally launched processes.
These are required to bootstrap the system and to give managed access to browser features such as DOM,
not available to worker tasks in processes. These are all available at internal:
volume.
Be careful not to over-assign internal:
paths, as it will probably make your system inoperative.
Shell
TBD (stdin/out/err channels of structured messages passed to subprocesses, power-shell like formatters, readline)
Windowing
TBD (internal:...
handler allowing opening a window to DOM, returning channel
for controlling window content)
Documentation
Latest developer documentation is available at http://wrte.cloud/docs/
Author
You may reach me at email: Tomasz Sterna mailto:tomek@xiaoka.com