Install spidermonkey with Homebrew, MacPorts, pacman

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• js
• js140
• js140-config

Project history

Mozilla's JavaScript engine blog says Brendan Eich wrote the first SpiderMonkey version in 1995. Current Mozilla documentation describes SpiderMonkey as the JavaScript and WebAssembly implementation library of Firefox, with behavior defined by the ECMAScript and WebAssembly specifications.

Adoption history

SpiderMonkey's main adoption path is Firefox, but its standalone shell and embedding APIs have long made it useful to developers, testers, and distribution packagers. The spidermonkey.dev homepage says it is used in Firefox, Servo, and other projects, can be embedded in C++ and Rust projects, run as a standalone shell, and compiled to WASI.

How it is used

Package users often install SpiderMonkey for the js shell, development headers, or embedding experiments rather than as a user-facing app. Mozilla's build documentation describes using mach to build the JS shell, running it with mach run, and testing with jit-tests and jstests.

Why package nerds care

SpiderMonkey matters to package nerds because it is a major browser engine component exposed as a standalone runtime package. Its versioned shells, embedding headers, JIT behavior, WebAssembly support, and test-suite expectations make it a recurring dependency and compatibility target across language-runtime packaging.

Timeline

• 1995: Brendan Eich writes the first SpiderMonkey version.
• 2000s: SpiderMonkey continues as Mozilla's core JavaScript engine and accumulates shell, embedding, and test infrastructure.
• 2010s: Mozilla documents major engine internals and performance work through the JavaScript engine blog and source docs.
• 2020s: SpiderMonkey is documented as a JavaScript and WebAssembly engine used in Firefox and embeddable in C++ and Rust.

Related projects

• Firefox is the primary consumer and source tree for SpiderMonkey.
• Servo is listed by spidermonkey.dev as a user of the engine.
• ECMAScript and WebAssembly specifications define the behavior SpiderMonkey implements.
• Searchfox and Firefox Source Docs are common navigation surfaces for the source.

Sources

• https://api.github.com/repos/mozilla-firefox/firefox
• https://blog.mozilla.org/javascript/2014/07/21/slimmer-and-faster-javascript-strings-in-firefox/
• https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/js/
• https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/js/build.html
• https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox
• https://spidermonkey.dev/