Best way to get spidermonkey js on Ubuntu?

Question

I need to install the Spidermonkey JS engine on my work machine. The project I'm working on has a jslint script that requires Spidermonkey or a similar js binary. I've tried compiling Spidermonkey from source and gotten stuck in dependency hell. I tried installing the rhino package from the ubuntu repositories, and that turned out to be slow and broken. This morning, I successfully compiled Google's V8 engine and built v8jslint following the instructions here:

http://blog.stevenreid.co.uk/2011/06/27/jslint-command-line-tool-powered-by-v8/

v8jslint works, but will only lint one file at a time. For instance,

$ v8jslint foo/*.js

if I have a.js, b.js and c.js under foo, v8jslint will only lint a.js. Easy fix: I could write a bash script for this. A bigger problem is that v8jslint is not compatible with the Spidermonkey jslint on our build server. Has anyone had any success building Spidermonkey on a recent version of Ubuntu, or know a good workaround?

Can I ask what you mean by "v8jslint is not compatible with the Spidermonkey jslint" please?. — Steve, Jul 21 '11 at 06:45
"v8jslint is not compatible with the Spidermonkey jslint on our build server." That is, Spidermonkey's lint will catch certain errors that v8 misses and vice versa. So I don't know if the build will pass if I have v8 and the server runs spidermonkey. — ovrkenthousand, Aug 12 '11 at 23:41

score 22 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 21 '17 at 15:18

22

You can build from source, but spider monkey is still available on ubuntu, it's just been renamed to "libmozjs". Install "libmozjs-24-bin" and then either refer to it as "js24" or symlink /usr/bin/js24 to "js", like so:

sudo apt-get install libmozjs-24-bin; sudo ln -sf /usr/bin/js24 /usr/bin/js

edited Apr 21 '17 at 15:18

iFreilicht

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answered Feb 18 '15 at 19:29

easel

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Thanks for recent answer. – Glenn McAllister Mar 30 '15 at 21:44
5

`sudo apt-get install libmozjs-24-bin; sudo ln -sf /usr/bin/js24 /usr/bin/js` – Cameron Taggart Jul 19 '16 at 20:17
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@CameronTaggart Thanks a lot, I added your comment to the answer. – iFreilicht Apr 21 '17 at 15:19

score 16 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 12 '11 at 16:55

Fixed it. You need the 'autoconf2.13' package. Install it with apt-get. Go to the SpiderMonkey source code page on Mozilla. Find the hg repository (linked below) and download a snapshot of the Mozilla tree. Don't clone it, just get the archive as .tar.gz or .tar.bz2 from the top bar.

http://hg.mozilla.org/index.cgi/mozilla-central/file/tip

Unzip the archive and cd into the root directory.

$ cd js/src
$ autoconf2.13
$ ./configure
$ make

This should make a binary called js. For some reason, when I ran make install, it did not copy js into /bin/. I just symlinked /bin/js to point to ~/.../mozilla/js/src/js. Lint scripts work now and I don't have to start a build to fix lint errors anymore :P

Source:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/SpiderMonkey_Build_Documentation

Note: the above link calls for the command autoconf-2.13. I think this is a typo; you want to use autoconf2.13 as I wrote in the code.

It's not a typo, on ArchLinux it's indeed called `autoconf-2.13`. It depends on your distro, I guess. — Rob W, Feb 14 '13 at 11:07

score 6 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 15 '11 at 12:58

6

update:

looks like spidermonkey-bin is no longer available through the launchpad ppa

plus the v8jslint repo was down when I tried to clone it.

answered Nov 15 '11 at 12:58

scytale

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score 5 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 03 '11 at 07:58

Also, (via #2: spidermonkey-bin not availble in Ubuntu Lucid - Issues - hallettj/jslint.vim - GitHub), can use PPA for Launchpad Engineering : “Canonical Launchpad Engineering” team:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:launchpad/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install spidermonkey-bin
apt-cache show spidermonkey-bin
sudo apt-get install spidermonkey-bin # also installs extra: libmozjs2d

# .. and then: 
$ js --help
JavaScript-C 1.8.0 pre-release 1 2007-10-03
usage: js [-zKPswWxCij] [-t timeoutSeconds] [-c stackchunksize] [-o option] [-v version] [-f scriptfile] [-e script] [-S maxstacksize] [scriptfile] [scriptarg...]
$ js
js> var f = function(){ print("the answer is " + 42); }; 
js> f();
the answer is 42
js> ^C
$

I don't see spidermonkey-bin listed there. Did they drop it, or am I missing something? — nealmcb, Nov 17 '12 at 20:12

score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 26 '16 at 11:28

Install the package libmozjs-24-bin. It contains the Spidermonkey JavaScript shell binary /usr/bin/js24 which you can the be installed as an alternative for the command js.

sudo apt-get install libmozjs-24-bin
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/js js /usr/bin/js24 10

Best way to get spidermonkey js on Ubuntu?

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