Does Rhino have a future?

Question

I'm looking to add serious scripting into my Java app and JavaScript would be a great language choice. My concern though is the Rhino project and its future.

While Groovy/Jruby etc have seen constant updates, and engines like V8 and SpiderMonkey make continuous and significant performance boosts; Rhino languishes with its last release in March '09.

I've seen some work on hacking Rhino:

• Great Thundering Rhinos! presentation from Oracle
• Explore and implement JDK7 InvokeDynamic Google Summer of Code project

But nothing solid about actually merging this code into the project and getting an active committer community around it.

What is the Rhino road map? For example, is there any plan to bring invokedynamic to the Rhino world?

Answer 1

Rhino development has picked up again because of the new features that have been added to the JVM. Here's the article on infoq detailing the development roadmap.

Answer 2

is there any plan to bring invokedynamic to the Rhino world

Oracle is working on Project Nashorn, which is a new Javascript engine implementation based on invokedynamic and whatever else in JSR-292.

Rhino will continue to be available for legacy JVMs.

Answer 3

Rhino is there around for more than a decade, I do not see any other alternative to Rhino to embed Javascript support in Java applications.

Developments of Rhino was slow in the past and it does not seem to be very active (for e.g. V8 engine). I am not aware of any official road map page, may be its worth checking with the developers mailing list.

Answer 4

You can also try scala, here some links : http://www.dzone.com/links/javaone_2011_script_bowl_jruby_vs_groovy_vs_scala.html

Scala has also a REPL so interactive coding is possible and fun!

Try it: Www.simplyscala.com

Depending on your needs you could embed a scala REPL in your app.