A question for the creators of XO

jasonnix

Hello,
Why is XO written in JavaScript? Why isn't it written in PHP, Ruby or HTML5 programming languages? Are PHP, Ruby or HTML5 programming languages not able to do this?

Thanks.

florent

@jasonnix I am not a creator, but I work on XO .
Most of he uses case can be done in any languages. You could clone XO (or even do more) in any language( though I don't advice to chose cobol)
Javascript here is quite handy, since a lot of interactions are event based ( a changed from the api is repercuted on XO server ) and a lot of disk handling is easier to do with stream in the backup

Also we share the same language with the front (HTML5/react) , that ease some of the pain of data transformation between language.

a little bit of history : https://xen-orchestra.com/blog/current-state-and-perspectives/

jasonnix

Hi @florent,
So somehow this was a personal taste. Is it correct?

davemcl

@jasonnix Not really a taste thing.
React likely has the larger ecosystem and majority of mindshare in JS land.
There are very comprehensive component libraries out there for React and the growing numbers of React devs makes it easier to find people to work on your product.
Given the type of frontend/backend interaction that XOA requires via web sockets React/Javascript is a solid choice.

olivierlambert

XO creator here. Initially started in PHP (back in 2009).

Switched to JS for many reasons, but all in all it was because you can have one language both for backend (NodeJS) and frontend. It's also relatively easy to get people fluent in JS

jasonnix

Hello @olivierlambert,
Can't PHP or Ruby really have the functionality and features of JavaScript? Aren't the number of PHP or Ruby developers equal or more than JavaScript?

olivierlambert

Short answer (I'm in vacation): no, not in our case.

Also I'm not sure to understand the reason behind your question

jasonnix

Hi @olivierlambert,
Can you tell me which JavaScript features are not available in Ruby or PHP?

gskger

@jasonnix On the other hand, why should one use Ruby or PHP when Javascript fits the projects requirements? Javascript is a State of the Art development environment with a lot of available and capable resources. According to the (maybe biased ) conclusion of the State of Javascript 2022 survey, JavaScript and TypeScript are more vibrant than ever. You don't normally change horses in projects like this without good reason.

Would love to understand why you are asking though.

jasonnix

Thanks @gskger.
I asked because languages like PHP and Ruby are very popular in the web and have many developers. you said "Javascript is a State of the Art development environment with a lot of available and capable resources.", I want to know what features are there in this project that PHP or Ruby can't do.

gskger

@jasonnix said in A question for the creators of XO:

I want to know what features are there in this project that PHP or Ruby can't do

A feature comparison (or retrospective evaluation of the decision) is not needed anymore for a project that already choose a development environment years ago, engaged people with the required skills and build a deployment process around a commercial product.

Could XO be build with PHP or Ruby? Probably yes. Does it add value to the product? Probably no, because it working just fine with Javascript as a future proofed development environment.

I apologize if I still not get why you are asking.

olivierlambert

I start to wonder if we are talking to an actual human or an LLM I still don't get the point of this discussion.

jasonnix

Hi @olivierlambert,
No, I'm not a bot. I asked it because I need your experiences. I want to make a panel for Xen.

DustinB

@jasonnix said in A question for the creators of XO:

Hi @olivierlambert,
No, I'm not a bot. I asked it because I need your experiences. I want to make a panel for Xen.

So you know how to program with PHP and Ruby and not with Javascript, so the question is really "Why can't this be rewritten so I can help?"

florent

@DustinB you are really asking to rewrite the full XO project in PHP so you can contribute? or did I miss something

since there is only 136K line of code to rewrite, maybe it can be a good weekend project ?

marcungeschikts

@jasonnix said in A question for the creators of XO:

I asked because languages like PHP and Ruby are very popular in the web and have many developers.

Javascript and node.js seem to be more popular than PHP and Ruby:
https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#most-popular-technologies-language-prof
https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#most-popular-technologies-webframe-prof

nikade

I dont think a lot of ppl use PHP anymore, its a good language to get started with coding but its not something you want to run in mission critical production environments.

I think node/java is a good choice for this project since it can be used for both backend and frontend, it runs smooth on pretty much all distros that supports it and now days a lot of ppl know node/java so it is easy to find ppl to code for you.

olivierlambert

PHP is still widely used and there's some neat frameworks. But again, seeing the language only from its popularity is wrong. It's an entire "ecosystem" you need to look at:

being reasonably good for your existing team (ie if your team like the language/framework or not, doesn't matter if it's personal taste, it will have an impact on the team performance)
if the language is not too niche to easily find more devs when you grow
that the language pros are worth it in your context (ie we don't specifically need something too complex to learn like Rust to build an UI): all about usage context. It's obviously different for an hypervisor or a toolstack
there's a big enough ecosystem (libraries, packaging, sec updates etc.)

And probably other things I forgot. So as you can see, there's not one reason to adopt a language, but many and most of all them depend on the project and people around it.

DustinB

@florent said in A question for the creators of XO:

@DustinB you are really asking to rewrite the full XO project in PHP so you can contribute? or did I miss something

since there is only 136K line of code to rewrite, maybe it can be a good weekend project ?

I'm not, lol. I was pointing out what @jasonnix was seeming to ask.

gskger

@jasonnix said in A question for the creators of XO:

I want to make a panel for Xen

If by make a panel for Xen you mean a dashboard to visualize or controll a Xen-enabled host or the virtualized guests, I would suggest to start learning about XAPI or better XO API.

How you design or implement such a panel is up to your ideas, capabilities and choice of the tools you are familiar with, be it Ruby, PHP, Java or Javascript. Also check out XCP-ng Center which is maintained by @michael-manley in a community effort and uses C# to controll Xen-enabled hosts.