HackerReposA FIELD GUIDE TO OPEN SOURCE
ProSponsor the shelf♧ 0
← Back to top all-time
chakra-core
ChakraCore
JavaScript2016–2023
chakra-core / ChakraCore

ChakraCore

ChakraCore is an open source Javascript engine with a C API.

55Distinct people
64Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
9.3KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

ChakraCore is an open source Javascript engine with a C API.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year64 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2016-01-13 17:49:37 UTC to 2023-12-18 22:59:20 UTC.

01020302016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 26 mentions; 7 submissions, 19 comments20162017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 10 mentions; 1 submissions, 9 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 15 mentions; 3 submissions, 12 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments20192020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2023

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC26719
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1019
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC15312
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
ChakraCore ChakraCore is a JavaScript engine with a C API you can use to add support for JavaScript to any C or C compatible project. It can be compiled for x64 processors on Linux macOS and Windows. And x86 and ARM for Windows only. It is a future goal to support x86 and ARM processors on Linux and ARM on macOS. Future of ChakraCore As you may have heard Microsoft Edge no longer uses Chakra. Microsoft will continue to provide security updates for ChakraCore 1.11 until 9th March 2021 but do not intend to support it after that. ChakraCore is planned to continue as a community project targeted primarily at embedded use cases. We hope to produce future releases with new features and enhancements to support such use cases. We also would like to invite any interested parties to be involved in this project. For further details please see the following draft planning documents: Overall plan Version 1.12 plan Also see discussion in issue #6384 If you'd like to contact the community team please either open an issue or join the Discord chat linked above. Security If you believe you have found a security issue in ChakraCore 1.11, please share it with Microsoft privately following the guidance at the Microsoft Security TechCenter. Reporting it via this channel helps minimize risk to projects built with ChakraCore. If you find a security issue in the Master branch of Chakracore but not in 1.11 please join our Discord server and private message one of the Core team members. Documentation ChakraCore Architecture Quickstart Embedding ChakraCore API Reference Contribution guidelines Blogs, talks and other resources Building ChakraCore You can build ChakraCore on Windows 7 SP1 or above, and Windows Server 2008 R2 or above, with either Visual Studio 2015 or 2017 with C++ support installed. Once you have Visual Studio installed: Clone ChakraCore through git clone https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore.git Open Build\Chakra.Core.sln in Visual Studio Build Solution On macOS you can build ChakraCore with the xcode command line tools and cmake. On Linux you can build ChakraCore with cmake and ninja. More details in Building ChakraCore. Alternatively, see Getting ChakraCore binaries for pre-built ChakraCore binaries. Using ChakraCore Once built, you have a few options for how you can use ChakraCore: The most basic is to test the engine is running correctly with the application ch.exe (ch on linux or macOS). This app is a lightweight host of ChakraCore that you can use to run small applications. After building, you can find this binary in: Windows: Build\VcBuild\bin\${platform}_${configuration} (e.g. Build\VcBuild\bin\x64_debug) macOS/Linux: buildFolder/config/ch (e.g. out/Release/ch) You can embed ChakraCore in your applications - see documentation and samples. A note about using ChakraCore: ChakraCore is a JavaScript engine, it does not include the external APIs that are provided by a Web Browser or Node.js. For example, DOM APIs like document.write() are additional APIs that are not provided by ChakraCore, when embedding ChakraCore in an application you will need to implement your own input and output APIs. For debugging, in ch you can use print() to put text to the terminal. Alternatively, if you are using the vcpkg dependency manager you can download and install ChakraCore with CMake integration in a single command: vcpkg install chakracore Contribute Contributions to ChakraCore are welcome. Here is how you can contribute to ChakraCore: Submit bugs and help us verify fixes. Submit pull requests for bug fixes and features and discuss existing proposals Please refer to Contribution Guidelines for more details. License Code licensed under the MIT License. Contact Us If you have questions about ChakraCore, or you would like to reach out to us about an issue you're having or for development advice as you work on a ChakraCore issue, you can reach us as follows: Open an issue and prefix the issue title with [Question]. See Question tag for already-opened questions. Discuss ChakraCore with the team and the community via the Discord link above
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

64 sources
ChakraCore, the former JavaScript engine of Microsoft's Edge browser, has in its repo a decent high-level description of how its JIT compilation is integrated: https://github.com/chakra-core/ChakraCore/wiki/Architecture-... I found the source code to be quite readable too, last time I delved into it. Also its command line tool ("ch"), when compiled in debug mode, has loads of options available to show what it's doing internally when it executes a JavaScript program.
In Crystal's Interpreter (2021)
I am astonished at the omission of ChakraCore, open sourced by Microsoft as what Edge used to use, but sadly abandoned by them after they switched Edge to Chromium: https://github.com/chakra-core/ChakraCore. But it looks like it’s still chugging along as a community effort rather than being completely abandoned. ChakraCore is definitely one of the most notable and significant implementations after the big three.
In Enumerating and analyzing 40 non-V8 JavaScript implementations
This is essentially a dead research project, but: * ChakraCore lives on, even though the old Edge is dead. It has new maintainers that are not affiliated with Microsoft in any way [0] * The time-travel APIs still exist [1] as well as a full set of "regular" debugging APIs. * Related previous NH discussion: [2] [0] https://github.com/chakra-core/ChakraCore [1] https://github.com/chakra-core/ChakraCore/blob/0fc6103461dac... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19601347
In JavaScript Time Travel Debugging in ChakraCore
Sometimes, but not always... For example, the Edge bug was at [1]. It didn't reproduce when the devtools were open, it only happened if the optimizer tried to optimize it which was non-deterministic, and it would only trigger in some cases in pretty weird spots with a lot of supporting code. Feature detecting that would be a nightmare, but UA detecting it (since I now know the exact versions impacted) is super easy and simple and the fix is extremely small. I don't have that in our codebase any more, but it was a perfect example of a bug which can't easily be feature-detected. [1] https://github.com/microsoft/ChakraCore/issues/1415
In Google Now Forces Edge Preview Users to Use Chrome for the Modern YouTube
I really don't think this is it, if I'm being completely frank, because they already have an enormous amount of up front work done with making Windows PWA friend: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/pwa I also am willing to surmise that they are going to put in alot of work re-working all their APIs that are exposed as Edge based interfaces into whatever engine they and up with here (namely chromium), so I don't think it would have been beyond them to put in the work to do something like they did with node and chakra core: https://github.com/nodejs/node-chakracore (which, btw, for now isn't dead: https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore/issues/5865 likely for the reasoning I mentioned above) I just don't buy it. I don't think easy electron compatibility is the main drive here.
In We Need Chrome No More

Showing the 15 most recent of 64 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.

MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME

A few shortcuts

/
Search the collection
?
Open this guide
Esc
Close dialogs and navigation

Your saved repositories and interests stay in this browser.