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Browsix: Bridging the Gap Between Unix and the Browser

Authors:

Emery D. BergerAuthors Info & Claims

ASPLOS '17: Proceedings of the Twenty-Second International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems

Pages 253 - 266

https://doi.org/10.1145/3037697.3037727

Published: 04 April 2017 Publication History

Abstract

Applications written to run on conventional operating systems typically depend on OS abstractions like processes, pipes, signals, sockets, and a shared file system. Porting these applications to the web currently requires extensive rewriting or hosting significant portions of code server-side because browsers present a nontraditional runtime environment that lacks OS functionality.

This paper presents Browsix, a framework that bridges the considerable gap between conventional operating systems and the browser, enabling unmodified programs expecting a Unix-like environment to run directly in the browser. Browsix comprises two core parts: (1) a JavaScript-only system that makes core Unix features (including pipes, concurrent processes, signals, sockets, and a shared file system) available to web applications; and (2) extended JavaScript runtimes for C, C++, Go, and Node.js that support running programs written in these languages as processes in the browser. Browsix supports running a POSIX shell, making it straightforward to connect applications together via pipes.

We illustrate Browsix's capabilities via case studies that demonstrate how it eases porting legacy applications to the browser and enables new functionality. We demonstrate a Browsix-enabled LaTeX editor that operates by executing unmodified versions of pdfLaTeX and BibTeX. This browser-only LaTeX editor can render documents in seconds, making it fast enough to be practical. We further demonstrate how Browsix lets us port a client-server application to run entirely in the browser for disconnected operation. Creating these applications required less than 50 lines of glue code and no code modifications, demonstrating how easily Browsix can be used to build sophisticated web applications from existing parts without modification.

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Cited By

Lefeuvre HGain GBădoiu VDinca DSchiller VRaiciu CHuici FOlivier PTsafrir DMUSUVATHI MGupta RAbu-Ghazaleh N(2024)Loupe: Driving the Development of OS Compatibility LayersProceedings of the 29th ACM International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems, Volume 110.1145/3617232.3624861(249-267)Online publication date: 27-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3617232.3624861
Park SLee JChoi YCha H(2024)Vulture: Cross-Device Web Experience with Fine-Grained Graphical User Interface DistributionIEEE INFOCOM 2024 - IEEE Conference on Computer Communications10.1109/INFOCOM52122.2024.10621433(2478-2487)Online publication date: 20-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/INFOCOM52122.2024.10621433
Toufie ZKabaso B(2024)A Next Generation Web Browser Execution Environment2024 IEEE International Conference on Data and Software Engineering (ICoDSE)10.1109/ICoDSE63307.2024.10829873(1-6)Online publication date: 30-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICoDSE63307.2024.10829873
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Index Terms

Browsix: Bridging the Gap Between Unix and the Browser
1. Information systems
  1. World Wide Web
    1. Web interfaces
      1. Browsers
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software organization and properties
    1. Contextual software domains
      1. Operating systems

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Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

ASPLOS '17: Proceedings of the Twenty-Second International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems

April 2017

856 pages

ISBN:9781450344654

DOI:10.1145/3037697

General Chairs:
Yunji Chen
Institute of Computing Technology, CAS, China
,
Olivier Temam
Google, USA
,
Program Chair:
John Carter
IBM, USA

ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News Volume 45, Issue 1
Asplos'17
March 2017
812 pages
ISSN:0163-5964
DOI:10.1145/3093337
Editor:
Babak Falsafi
Interim
Issue’s Table of Contents
ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 52, Issue 4
ASPLOS '17
April 2017
811 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/3093336
Editor:
Matthew Fluet
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2017 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Published: 04 April 2017

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National Science Foundation
Facebook Graduate Fellowship

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ASPLOS '17

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ASPLOS '17: Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems

April 8 - 12, 2017

Xi'an, China

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ASPLOS '17 Paper Acceptance Rate 53 of 320 submissions, 17%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 535 of 2,713 submissions, 20%

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Cited By

Lefeuvre HGain GBădoiu VDinca DSchiller VRaiciu CHuici FOlivier PTsafrir DMUSUVATHI MGupta RAbu-Ghazaleh N(2024)Loupe: Driving the Development of OS Compatibility LayersProceedings of the 29th ACM International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems, Volume 110.1145/3617232.3624861(249-267)Online publication date: 27-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3617232.3624861
Park SLee JChoi YCha H(2024)Vulture: Cross-Device Web Experience with Fine-Grained Graphical User Interface DistributionIEEE INFOCOM 2024 - IEEE Conference on Computer Communications10.1109/INFOCOM52122.2024.10621433(2478-2487)Online publication date: 20-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/INFOCOM52122.2024.10621433
Toufie ZKabaso B(2024)A Next Generation Web Browser Execution Environment2024 IEEE International Conference on Data and Software Engineering (ICoDSE)10.1109/ICoDSE63307.2024.10829873(1-6)Online publication date: 30-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICoDSE63307.2024.10829873
Toufie ZKabaso B(2023)The Next Evolution of Web Browser Execution Environment Performance2023 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Computing and Data Communication Systems (icABCD)10.1109/icABCD59051.2023.10220564(1-7)Online publication date: 3-Aug-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/icABCD59051.2023.10220564
Li ZXie F(2023)Concolic Testing of Front-end JavaScriptFundamental Approaches to Software Engineering10.1007/978-3-031-30826-0_4(67-87)Online publication date: 22-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-031-30826-0_4
Jangda APowers BBerger EGuha ADan TDahlia M(2019)Not so fastProceedings of the 2019 USENIX Conference on Usenix Annual Technical Conference10.5555/3358807.3358817(107-120)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3358807.3358817
Dietrich CNaumann SThrift RLohmann D(2019)RT.js: Practical Real-Time Scheduling for Web Applications2019 IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS)10.1109/RTSS46320.2019.00017(69-79)Online publication date: Dec-2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/RTSS46320.2019.00017
Baxter SNigam RPolitz JKrishnamurthi SGuha A(2018)Putting in all the stops: execution control for JavaScriptACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/3296979.319237053:4(30-45)Online publication date: 11-Jun-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3296979.3192370
Sharrock RAngrave LHamonic ELuckin RKlemmer SKoedinger K(2018)WebLinuxProceedings of the Fifth Annual ACM Conference on Learning at Scale10.1145/3231644.3231703(1-2)Online publication date: 26-Jun-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3231644.3231703
Baxter SNigam RPolitz JKrishnamurthi SGuha AFoster JGrossman D(2018)Putting in all the stops: execution control for JavaScriptProceedings of the 39th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation10.1145/3192366.3192370(30-45)Online publication date: 11-Jun-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3192366.3192370
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