Nucleus

a minimal platform-agnostic JS runtime

Nucleus is a specification for a minimal JS runtime that makes it fun to create your own platforms.

Up and Running

To get up and running with Nucleus implementations, check out the implementations directory. The duktape README is a great place to start.

Command Line Interface

# Show version and build options
nucleus --version

# Run an app from a tree in the filesystem.
nucleus app-src -- args...
# Run an app from a zip bundle.
nucleus app.zip -- args...

# Manually build a standalone binary with nucleus embedded.
cat /usr/local/bin/nucleus app.zip > app
chmod +x app
./app args...

# Manually build a standalone binary that links to system nucleus.
echo "#!/usr/local/bin/nucleus" > prefix
cat prefix app.zip > app
chmod + x app
./app args...

# Build app with linked nucleus in shebang
nucleus app.zip --linked --output app

Basic Application Skeleton

This is a sample application that's using a node.js style require system.

app
├── main.js
└── node_modules
    └── node-core
        ├── bootstrap.js
        .
        .
        .

The only thing special is there must be an main.js at the root of the tree.
This file will be run in the JS runtime with a global nucleus injected.

// main.js
// Bootstrap the node environment with the dofile builtin.
nucleus.dofile('node_modules/node-core/bootstrap.js')(function (require, module) {
  // node code goes here
});

JS nucleus Interface

This global is the only thing custom injected into the JavaScript global scope. It provides access to all the C bindings in nucleus as well as some utility functions to work with the bundle resources and the JS runtime.

You can see full API docs for this in api/nucleus.md.