After several discussions, it is not so clear anymore what to do. First of all, SilkJS does not follow https://developers.google.com/v8/embed#dynamic on how to handle foreign (i.e. C/C++) pointers when embedding v8. The return value of External::New is supposed to live in an internal field, but it is *not* a valid JavaScript value, it is just a Foreign in disguise, sometimes optimized to a Smi. Our v8.h header is very confusing regarding this fact, and having External as a subclass of Value is basically wrong. Furthermore Value::IsExternal is completely broken. I can see 2 ways of fixing things:
* Keep External's implementation basically as it is. i.e. either a Smi or a Foreign. If we do this, we should not keep External as a subclass of Value (perhaps a subclass of Data?) and we should remove the IsExternal predicate. This means that e.g. SilkJS has to change, following https://developers.google.com/v8/embed#dynamic. As it is, one can easily crash SilkJS by pure JavaScript. * Make External basically a convenience wrapper for a JavaScript object with an internal property containing a Foreign. This way we could keep External a subclass of value and we could fix IsExternal. The downside is that all code already following https://developers.google.com/v8/embed#dynamic would basically do a useless double indirection, punishing people following that guide. We will discuss these options, there are good arguments for both of them... Cheers, S. -- v8-users mailing list v8-users@googlegroups.com http://groups.google.com/group/v8-users
