Tux Machines

Extensions in GNOME 45

Posted by Rianne Schestowitz on Sep 02, 2023

=> Stable kernels: Linux 6.5.1, Linux 6.4.14, Linux 6.1.51, Linux 5.15.130, Linux 5.10.194, Linux 5.4.256, Linux 4.19.294, and Linux 4.14.325 | WineHQ - Wine Announcement - The Wine development release 8.15 is now available. (UPDATED)

=> ↺ Shell

By now it is probably no longer news to many: GNOME Shell moved from GJS’ own custom imports system to standard JavaScript modules (ESM).

JavaScript originated in web browsers to add a bit of interactivity to otherwise static pages. There was no need to split up small code snippets into multiple files, so the language did not provide a mechanism for that.

This did become an issue when people started writing bigger programs in JavaScript, so environments like node.js and GJS added their own import systems to organize code into multiple files. As a consequence, developers and tooling had a hard time transitioning from one environment to another.

That changed in 2015 when ECMAScript 6 standardized modules, resulting in a well-defined, widely-supported syntax supported by all major JavaScript engines. GJS has supported ESModules since 2021, but porting GNOME Shell was a much bigger task that had to be done all at once.

Read on

=> ↺ Read On: GNOME

=> gemini.tuxmachines.org