JavaScript 1.7 Difficulties

For my course in compilers, we have a semester-long project in which we build a compiler for a DSL called WIG. We can target whatever language and platform we want, and there are certain language features of JavaScript, specifically the Rhino implementation, that I thought could be leveraged very productively. I was excited to have the opportunity to shed the burden of browser incompatibilities, and to drill down into the more advanced features of the JavaScript language. Unfortunately, I've also encountered some initial challenges, some of which are irreconcilable.

E4X

One thing that I was excited about was E4X. In WIG, you're able to define small chunks of parameterizable HTML code, which maps almost 1-1 to E4X syntax. Unfortunately, Rhino E4X support is broken on Ubuntu Interpid and Jaunty. Adding the missing libraries to the classpath has not resolved the issue for me. On the other hand, the workaround of getting Rhino 1.7R2 from upstream, which comes with out-of-the-box E4X support, is unacceptable, as this Rhino version seems to introduce a regression, in which it throws a NoMethodFoundException when calling methods on HTTP servlet Request and Response objects. I'll file a bug report about this later, but the immediate effect is that I'm stuck with the Ubuntu version, and without E4X support.

Language Incompatibilities

Destructuring assignments were introduced first in JavaScript 1.7. While array destructuring assignments have worked fine for me, unfortunately, I haven't been able to get object destructuring assignments to work under any implementation but Spidermonkey 1.8. Rhino 1.7R1 and 1.7R2, as well as Spidermonkey 1.7.0 both fail to interpret the example in Mozilla's documentation: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/New_in_JavaScript_1.7#section_25

This is disappointing, as it would have provided an elegant solution to several problems presented by WIG.