Running V8 Javascript Engine Standalone

V8 is easy to build and does not come with the Java VM overhead from Mozilla’s standalone Javascript interpreter. Luckily, V8 ships with code for building a console. Here is how to build this:

$> svn co http://v8.googlecode.com/svn/trunk v8-trunk
...
$> cd v8-trunk
$> scons
$> g++ ./samples/shell.cc -o v8-shell -I include libv8.a 

Now, we have a standalone binary called v8-shell.

Running the console:

$> ./v8-shell 
V8 version 2.0.2
> var x = 10;
> x
10
> function foo(x) { return x * x; }
> foo
function foo(x) { return x * x; }
> quit()

Executing Javascript from the command line:

$> ./v8-shell -e 'print("10*10 = " + 10*10)'
10*10 = 100

Many more features are documented in the help:

$> ./v8-shell --help
Usage:
...