Native Client (NaCl) and Portable Native Client (PNaCl) are open-source technologies for executing compiled code in a browser sandbox. PNaCl is portable and preferred but has a few limitations. Questions about the tool chain and SDK for Native Client as well as questions concerning behaviors of the resulting applications should use this tag. Questions involving HTML and JavaScript components used with Native Client may need those tags as well or instead.
The Native Client (NaCl) and Portable Native Client (PNaCl) open-source technologies are designed to run operating system independent, native compiled code securely inside browsers by containing the compiled code in a sandbox. The result is to provide the raw speed needed for browser based applications to compete with traditional software like 3D games, video editing, and other applications. Native Client gives languages like C and C++ the same level of portability and safety that JavaScript provides on the web today.
There are two versions of Native Client: Native Client using the native code of a specific target hardware and Portable Native Client using a portable hardware independent code. The Portable Native Client code is translated to Native Client code for the current hardware at the time it is executed in the sandbox.
Portable Native Client is preferred since one executable can run on multiple hardware while Native Client requires multiple hardware specific versions. However Portable Native Client does have a few limitations and Native Code may be required for a specific application.
A complete application is expected to use Native Client (PNaCl or NaCl) with HTML along with any needed JavaScript and CSS styles (JavaScript and CSS may be included in the HTML file or as separate files). An embed tag with a type of application/x-pnacl for Portable Native Client or application/x-nacl for Native Client is used in an HTML file specifying the application's manifest file to download and start the Native Client application.
Applications may be published through the Chrome Web Store.
From the SDK download page.
Platforms
Native Client supports several operating systems, including Windows, Linux, OSX, and ChromeOS. It supports several architectures including on x86-32, x86-64, ARM, and MIPS.
- Technical overview - explains what Native Client is in more detail
- SDK Download - download the Native Client Software Development Kit
- Debugging with Visual Studio - setup and debugging with VS 2012
- Sandbox Internals - links to processor specific documentation on the sandbox
