alt.hn

5/20/2025 at 2:55:25 PM

Show HN: Astra – a new js2exe compiler

 https://github.com/astracompiler/cli

by qwertycodepl

5/20/2025 at 3:57:34 PM

Looks like a good start. A few notes:

- The first thing on the "features" list should be something that other compilers cannot do. Esthetics (maybe just say "DX"?) is a nice to have - sometimes VERY nice to have - but should not be positioned as the most important item.

As the original post says the alternatives have poor ESM support - that's a good differentiator.

- Even though ES Modules are part of the ECMAScript standard, having a header stating "(Partial) Support for ECMAScript"- to me, at least - indicates the project does not support base JS features, not that ESM imports have problems. Maybe say "improved ESM support"?

- Docs seem a little bare. For example, the Usage section says:

    # Preinstall Node.js on the target machine
    astra install
Which machine is the "target" machine? I would assume, in the context of compiling, that the target would be the machine you are compiling for... but installing software remotely seems out of scope. Does it install it locally, or swap the bundled installation in the .exe?

Also, no mention of binary limitations in actual docs, despite mention in post.

Hopefully this does not come off as discouraging - this looks like a good project.

by Vorh

5/20/2025 at 4:03:49 PM

Thanks for the feedback! I'm constantly working on the project. It's hard to do bc node sea is still an experimental feaurte and there's no much documentation about it, and i want to make it highest quality possible. And it's my first open-source project what's actually getting attention. I would really appreciate any help with this project!

by qwertycodepl

5/20/2025 at 5:52:02 PM

This is not a compiler. It is doing no program translation. No register allocation. No parsing. No linking. It in no way resembles a compiler. Not every program that produces an executable file is a compiler just because some programs you may have heard of, like gcc, are in fact compilers.

I wish the JS universe would stop inventing new and wrong names for things.

(That said, this thing is at least using postject for actual insertion of the payload blob into the target executable, and based on its README, postjecth as the good taste to embed data as PE/ELF/Mach-O sections instead (as Bun does) of just YOLOing the attachment with cat.)

by quotemstr

5/20/2025 at 6:40:19 PM

I totally understand your point - Astra doesn’t do register allocation or full parsing, so strictly speaking, it’s not a compiler in the traditional sense.

I used the term "compiler" because for many developers, it’s strongly associated with "turning source code into a single binary." That’s what Astra does at a practical level - even if it's technically just bundling and embedding into a node executable using SEA and postject.

by qwertycodepl

5/20/2025 at 8:02:19 PM

> it’s strongly associated with "turning source code into a single binary."

Using things because they sound nice without thinking about whether they make sense is pretty much the whole JavaScript community. :)

by quotemstr

5/20/2025 at 8:30:46 PM

This whole thread was uncalled for honestly. It takes source, it makes an exe, that meets the definition for compiler to me. Your pedantry is not useful.

by Carrok

5/21/2025 at 2:39:46 PM

How would you define the difference between a compiler and a linker?

by sleepdeep

5/20/2025 at 3:27:21 PM

To understand the underlying architecture- is my understanding correct that this runs esbuild to bundle then bundles that with node runtime and creates a binary that executes "node index.js"?

by jasonjmcghee

5/20/2025 at 5:47:11 PM

Very interesting. The readme notes "Different than the others - Astra is a new approach to compiling JavaScript/TypeScript applications. It uses a different method than other compilers like pkg or nexe." but never really explains what the difference is. Is it just that the code is run through esbuild before the SEA step or is there some other "magic sauce"?

by zamadatix

5/20/2025 at 6:33:12 PM

Yes it's just esbuild and SEA BUT that's actually the point. SEA is officialy supported by node.js and it constantly improves. Remember pkg and nexe supports only the older versions of node.js (~14) and astra supports the latest ones.

So in a way, the "magic sauce" it that it doesn't try to do anything fancy. I made astra beacuse i needed to compile js to exe for latest versions.

I wanted astra to be simple, built on official tools, and be future-proof.

by qwertycodepl

5/20/2025 at 3:37:48 PM

You probably want to put that information in your README.md, because there is barely any information in the readme, and the docs look to be a placeholder atm =)

by TheRealPomax

5/20/2025 at 3:39:09 PM

thanks :)

by qwertycodepl

5/20/2025 at 5:34:55 PM

This is really interesting, got it up and running very quickly.

I'm not sure what the use case is and it doesn't auto-load chromium with its own web server from what I can tell. Is it just for creating javascript CLI utilities?

by dpcan

5/20/2025 at 8:36:29 PM

Yes, astra it's aiming to compile CLIs and servers (express, fastify etc.). It's not replacing electron.

by qwertycodepl

5/21/2025 at 5:59:30 PM

I don't get it, does this project do anything other than embedding js and node in a single executable?

Nothing wrong with that, but why call it a compiler instead of bundler which would make the intension obvious

by xhbxbsbebs

5/20/2025 at 3:42:59 PM

I clicked on this hoping for an actual compiler. However from what I can see this is a bundler. The name is confusing.

by belmarca

5/20/2025 at 3:48:22 PM

Thanks for the feedback! You're right - Astra is technically a bundler-to-executable tool, not a source-level compiler like Babel or TypeScript.

I called it a “compiler” in the sense that it transforms a JS project into a standalone .exe, similar to how tools like pkg or nexe are often described. That said, I’ll consider clarifying that in the description to avoid confusion. Appreciate the comment!

by qwertycodepl

5/20/2025 at 4:44:44 PM

Honestly, I would drop calling compiler altogether -- it's just not a compiler. It doesn't make it any less cool though!

by ymsodev

5/20/2025 at 5:53:07 PM

Blame bun's --compile flag: https://bun.sh/docs/bundler/executables

We're probably going to have to live with "compiler" meaning "bundler" as an ongoing JavaScript-world neologism.

by quotemstr

5/20/2025 at 4:58:49 PM

yeah it's not but i don't know how to call it. if i say it's bundler it will be more confusing in my opinion. waiting for your suggestions!

by qwertycodepl

5/20/2025 at 5:41:18 PM

Sometimes the term "packager" is used instead of "bundler". Honestly though, "compiler" is the term most likely to cause any confusion. Even if one is not familiar with packagers/bundlers "js to exe ${unknown phrase}" still conveys things more clearly than "js to exe ${misleading phrase}".

by zamadatix

5/20/2025 at 4:56:24 PM

> Average exe is ~70-80MB (depends on your code) so it's lighter than most compilers

I know it's JS not actually a compiler but a bundler that just packs node in with your code, but I still had a nice laugh at 80mb being light. I suppose that's where the overton window is in a world of 1gb node_modules folders.

I wish there was a middle ground between this sort of thing and QuickJS (which is actually light, but has a lot of rough edges when it comes to its filesystem and network interfaces)

by thot_experiment

5/20/2025 at 5:23:56 PM

Bun also supports this out of the box, and the overhead is likely a bit less (reportedly 30-40MB for a single `console.log` call with no further dependencies - I didn't verify that myself though).

https://bun.sh/docs/bundler/executables

I suspect a large portion of the executable size in both cases is for the ICU library for localization support (Note QuickJS has its own, much smaller l10n library.) It's possible to download a Node binary without ICU, which could trim ~30MB.

by TimTheTinker

5/20/2025 at 5:30:22 PM

> reportedly 30-40MB for a single `console.log` call with no further dependencies - I didn't verify that myself though

I got a 110 MB exe for "console.log('test')" in "test.ts" using "bun build .\test.ts --compile --outfile test.exe". Pretty compressible though, on the order of 1/4th the size pretty easily. Considering it has zstd compression for sourcemaps that'd be an interesting option to add in.

by zamadatix

5/20/2025 at 5:14:27 PM

What's light enough when the average user in the western hemisphere has +300gb of storage?

I'm just asking since a 512gb disk has become the standard when ordering a laptop.

by martinsnow

5/20/2025 at 5:44:50 PM

The amount of functionality an application provides should be the benchmark for the size rather than one's available disk space. I'm sitting on 20TB+ of available storage and anything over 1MB for a simple "Hello World" is excessive.

by CleanCoder

5/20/2025 at 8:10:55 PM

In professional and enthusiast circles, yes, but I think you underestimate the popularity of cheap laptops.

e.g. currently only 2 of the top 10 selling laptops on Amazon have >=300GB storage.

https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Computers-Accessories-La...

Cheap laptops with a Celeron, 4 GB RAM, and 64 GB storage have been incredibly popular since that formula became popular a handful of years ago. As are base-model MacBook Airs.

by kube-system

5/20/2025 at 5:49:50 PM

Well, if we already could make something in 1 MB, why do we want to achieve the same thing with 100 MB? It is as if there is a mentality of "somehow the higher the size the better".

by johnisgood

5/20/2025 at 3:09:45 PM

[flagged]

by luukfromaustria