Abstract Script Engines

Abstract Script Engines, or ASE, is a multi-platform and language-independent scripting environment. ASE has an in-process communication mechanism which allows objects to communicate together across language boundaries. Supported languages and runtimes for this release include C++, Java, COM, .NET, Lua, Perl, SpiderMonkey, and Rhino.

Features:

• Objects are usable across language boundaries. No IDL file is needed.
• Allows to create dynamic proxies for statically typed interfaces. A Perl object can implement a Java interface, for example.
• Exceptions can be thrown across language boundaries. A C++ exception can be caught by Java, for example.
• Library DLLs are usable without any sort of registration.
• Supports multithreading.
• Script objects are accessible from C++ code via a single abstract datatype named ASE_Variant. C++ objects can be exposed to scripts with minimal effort, too. No explicit memory management is required.

Installing ASE: installer for Windows

• Download asesetup from the ASE download page and install it.
• If you want to use Java with ASE, you need to install JRE version 6 or later. You can download it from http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp.
• If you want to use Perl with ASE, you need to install ActivePerl 5.8.x. You can download it from http://www.activestate.com/Products/ActivePerl/.
• If you want to use .NET with ASE, you need to install .NET Framework 2.0 or newer. Use Windows Update to install .NET Framework.

Installing ASE: source rpm packages for GNU/Linux

Download, build and install the following rpm packages. Source RPMs can be downloaded from the ASE download page.

luacpp	Lua build with c++
jsmt	SpiderMonkey build with multi-threading support
jdk	Java SDK ( http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp )
rhino	Rhino JavaScript interpreter
pmcjs	Perl-SpiderMonkey bridge
ase	ASE runtime

Installing ASE: source tarballs

Source tarballs can be downloaded from the ASE download page. There are some requrements for language engines to work with ASE.

• SpiderMonkey must be build with JS_THREADSAFE. Thus you need NSPR to build SpiderMonkey.
• Lua must be build with C++, so that Lua use C++ exceptions instead of longjmp().

Running scripts

On Windows, "aserun.exe" and "aserunw.exe" are the executables for ASE-compatible scripts. The former opens a console and the latter does not. Here is an example.

    C:\Program Files\ASE\samples>aserun genuuid.lua
    a91868b7-cada-4f62-9ba0-2ff5108fd041

On Unix OSes, "aserun" is the executable.

    $ aserun genuuid.lua
    df97470d-0bab-40b5-9a64-d9a1aff3f68a

Samples

There are some samples in the samples directory.

Script	Uses
args.js args.lua	Host.Args	shows how to get commandline arguments
dir.js dir.lua dir.rh	Perl (IO::Dir)	uses a Perl module from other languages
gd.js gd.lua gd.rh	Perl (GD)	generates a png file using GD library
genuuid.js genuuid.lua genuuid.pl genuuid.rh	Native.Util.UUID	generate a UUID (aka GUID)
glade.js glade.lua glade.rh	Perl (Gtk2::GladeXML)	a simple notepad
javathread.js javathread.lua	Java (java.lang.Thread)	uses Java threads from JavaScript and Lua
jsort.js jsort.lua jsort.pl	Java (java.util.Arrays)	shows how to create dynamic proxies for Java interfaces
nativethread.lua nativethread.js	Native.Util.Thread
swing.js swing.lua swing.pl	Java (javax.swing)	a simple GUI application
termcap.js termcap.lua	Perl (Term::Cap)
webbrowser.lua webbrowser.pl	CLR (System.Windows.Forms)	a minimal web browser
word.js word.lua	COM (Word.Application)

Samples in the svrsamples directory show how to implement a library using a statically typed language and how to use it.

svrsamples/native	C++
svrsamples/java	Java
svrsamples/clr	.NET assembly (Windows only)
svrsamples/com	in-process COM server (Windows only)