Would you recommend JavaScript for GNOME desktop apps?

Question

With the arrival of the new GNOME Developer Center I stumbled across JavaScript bindings for the gobject libraries. Now I would love to read a comment from an expert if he (or she) would recommend / consider using those for a desktop application. That involves consideration of aspects like

• API simplicity and usability
• developer documentation
• stability
• scalability
• gjs or Seed?

At once: Are those APIs ready for usage or would it be better to wait a little until it is more established? Can you develop a whole application in JS or would you restrict usage to scripting purposes?

Answer 1

Through GObject Instrospection you have access to the same API provided by the libraries written in C (with the lingo for JavaScript).

The documentation needs to be improved. However, you can always use C documentation as fallback. Nevertheless, you can help with the documentation for JavaScript as you learn ;-)

gnome-shell is written in JavaScript and C, therefore JavaScript is a first class citizen in GNOME 3. It should not have performance penalties (if so, it should be improved).

There is a discussion about the future of JavaScript in GNOME (whether to use gjs or seed), you can read the thread here: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2011-April/msg00147.html

As I said previously, with GObject instrospection you can write a whole application in JavaScript. For instance, you can take a look to "The Board", a new application written in JavaScript https://live.gnome.org/TheBoardProject