Node.js, the open-source event-based server, is set to get first-class Windows support following an announcement by Microsoft and the project’s primary sponsors, Joyent Inc.
Node.js is a server which makes use of the V8 JavaScript engine (sponsored by Google for use in its Chrome web browser) in a novel architecture in which system events drive callbacks developers implement. Using the JavaScript language, developers build code to which responds to events such as TCP or HTTP connections. Node.js then defers the notification of events to the OS and only spools up a small heap to respond when an event actually occurs. The end result is an extremely lightweight server which can handle thousands of requests per second, as well as other advantages such as code re-use between the client and server.
Node.js has supported OS X and Linux platforms since its creation; it had previously been infeasible for a native implementation for Windows to be constructed as it was a lot of work to re-implement the Node architecture to support Windows’ IOCP API (which would provide the OS-level eventing that Node’s performance relies upon).
In an announcement on their blog, Joyent’s Ryan Dahl said that Rackspace would also be contributing developer time to bring official Node.js Windows binaries to life.
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