Compiled to bytecode or something?

[ForbiddenEra]

Just saw thisthinghere; interesting.

I'd like to add some input while it's early still.

Besides the ease-of-distribution/runnability, IMO it seems like the two main desires for devs wanting something like this (eg. the stuff listed as 'existing sea solutions') is:

• some code protection
• better performance

While it wouldn't be impossible to 'decompile' v8 bytecode into some sort of source, neither is it impossible to decompile an executable binary to C or something in general.

Due to my lack of deep v8 knowledge, I'm not sure how much/if any performance improvement could be seen by pre-compiling any bundled code into it's bytecode but if there's a potential performance gain then I think this should be considered, plus the side-effect of making it at least slightly more difficult to get the original/similar representation to the original code back out.

I'm not sure if there's any interest towards this or if perhaps there's a consensus toward including the code as-is for some sort of transparency reasons but I thought it might be worth mentioning/opening an issue for discussion.

[RaisinTen]

FWIW, it is already possible to use the V8 bytecode equivalent of your code for the SEA. Here's a step by step demo (on macOS):

# The code you want to obfuscate by translating to V8 bytecode.
$ echo 'console.log(`Hello, ${process.argv[2]}`);' > hello.js

# Installing the dependencies.
$ npm init --yes && npm i --save-dev bytenode esbuild postject

# Creating a standalone JS file that uses the V8 bytecode of your original application.
$ node_modules/.bin/bytenode --compile hello.js
$ echo "require('bytenode').runBytecode(Buffer.from('$(base64 -i hello.jsc)', 'base64'))()" > input.js
$ node_modules/.bin/esbuild input.js --bundle --platform=node --external:electron > bundle.js

# Building the SEA.
$ echo '{ "main": "bundle.js", "output": "sea-prep.blob" }' > sea-config.json
$ node --experimental-sea-config sea-config.json
$ cp $(command -v node) hello
$ node_modules/.bin/postject hello NODE_SEA_BLOB sea-prep.blob \
    --sentinel-fuse NODE_SEA_FUSE_fce680ab2cc467b6e072b8b5df1996b2 \
    --macho-segment-name NODE_SEA

# Running it.
$ ./hello world
Hello, world
(node:2561) ExperimentalWarning: Single executable application is an experimental feature and might change at any time
(Use `hello --trace-warnings ...` to show where the warning was created)

[Bennch]

This will just work as hello.js contains no require. As soon the code gets a require like "const http = require('http');", it breaks..
Any idea?

The error message is this

`evalmachine.:1
"​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​"
^

TypeError: undefined is not a function
at evalmachine.:1:113
at Object. (C:\Users\User\Desktop\test\run.js:1:1511)
at Module._compile (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1376:14)
at Module._extensions..js (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1435:10)
at Module.load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1207:32)
at Module._load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1023:12)
at Function.executeUserEntryPoint [as runMain] (node:internal/modules/run_main:135:12)
at node:internal/main/run_main_module:28:49

Node.js v20.10.0`

[the-foreigner]

node:internal/util/embedding:48
throw new ERR_UNKNOWN_BUILTIN_MODULE(id);
^

Error [ERR_UNKNOWN_BUILTIN_MODULE]: No such built-in module: express
at embedderRequire (node:internal/util/embedding:48:11)
at src/index.js:2:17
at embedderRunCjs (node:internal/util/embedding:37:10)
at node:internal/main/embedding:18:8 {
code: 'ERR_UNKNOWN_BUILTIN_MODULE'
}