Chakra (JavaScript engine)


Chakra is a free and open-source JavaScript engine developed by Microsoft for its Microsoft Edge web browser. It is a fork of the JScript engine used in Internet Explorer. Like the Edge layout engine and unlike previous versions in Internet Explorer, the declared intention is that it will reflect the "Living Web". On December 5, 2015, it was announced that core components of Chakra will be open-sourced as ChakraCore.

Standards support

Chakra supports ECMAScript 5.1 with partial support for ECMAScript 6.

Open sourcing

Following an initial announcement on December 5, 2015, Microsoft open sourced the Chakra engine as ChakraCore, including all the key components of the JavaScript engine powering Microsoft Edge on their GitHub page under the MIT License on January 13, 2016. ChakraCore is essentially the same as the Chakra engine that powers the Microsoft Edge browser, but with platform-agnostic bindings, i.e. without the specific interfaces utilised within the Universal Windows App platform.
Microsoft has also created a project on GitHub that allows Node.js to use ChakraCore as its JavaScript engine instead of V8.