thisContext

bridging native apps and the Web

We’ve been able to run Caffeine headlessly in a Web Worker for some time now, using NodeJS. I’ve updated this support to use the Deno JavaScript runtime instead of Node. This gives us better access to familiar Web APIs, and a cleaner module system without npm. I’ve also extended the bridging capability of the code that Deno runs. Now, a native Squeak app can start Deno (via class OSProcess), Deno starts Caffeine in a worker, and the two Smalltalk instances can communicate with each other via remote messaging.

I’m using this bridge to let native Squeak participate in WebRTC sessions with other Smalltalks, as part of the Naiad team development system. The same Squeak object memory runs in both the native Squeak and the Deno worker. I’m sure many other interesting use cases will arise, as we explore what native Squeak and Web Squeak can do together!

This entry was posted on 9 July 2022 at 6:34 am and is filed under Appsterdam, Caffeine, consulting, Context, livecoding, Naiad, Smalltalk, Spoon, SqueakJS with tags Caffeine, smalltalk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.