About the Javascript Engine
Mozilla's JavaScript engine (named SpiderMonkey) the component responsible for taking JavaScript code written by programmers, and executing it efficiently.
SpiderMonkey is broken into a number of pieces:
- The core JavaScript engine: Defines the most basic pieces of JavaScript, like the interpreter, data types, the parser etc.
- The JavaScript standard library: These are all the extra pieces of JavaScript that make it the language people know as JavaScript.
- The JIT compilers: SpiderMonkey has two JIT compilers, Baseline and IonMonkey which work in concert to provide fast execution of JavaScript quickly.
How do I get Started
To help you get started, you will want to:
- Have a checkout of the Firefox source code
- Make sure you can build and test SpiderMonkey
- Understand the basics of using Mercurial
- Understand how to submit a patch
- Read this walkthrough about how development works in Firefox.
If you are working on a bug (in Bugzilla), you may need to create a new account.
Comment in the bug or issue to say that you are working on it, and ask any questions that you have at that time. People who work on SpiderMonkey are available on Matrix in the #spidermonkey
channel, which can be a good way to get help. Please feel free to say 'Hi'
We really appreciate it if you've done some of your own research: Look the other comments, look at the documentation and source code, and try to figure out as much as you can first. Don't worry if it isn't all clear though. SpiderMonkey is a complicated piece of software.