It seems like a bit of a shame that wasm got support for exceptions but doesn't support effects which are a generalisation of the same concept.
https://wasmfx.dev/
I'm guessing this may be because exceptions exclusively require stack unwinding where as effects require full stack switching.
Thanks for that link! There goes my Saturday morning.
After a bunch of middle clicking I landed here [0]. So if I understand correctly, the current stack switching proposal depended on exception handling to be implemented first for resume.throw, so that bit was blocked until now.
But it's also further along than you might assume [1], i.e. you can already invoke Wasmtime with `-W stack-switching` and hit the boundaries where the experimental implementation breaks.
Sadly though, like many ambitious Wasm things that don't have revenue directly attached to them, it now seems partly a case of finding someone willing to sponsor or finish the remaining work [2].
I also found the list of open stack-switching issues[3] useful.
Oh I already know that about WASM now. All is in progress ... perpetual progress.
I'll look again in the next decade.
boomskats 2 hours ago [-]
I would suggest you look at it a little more often than that - to improve the quality of discussion here, if for nothing else.
torginus 1 hours ago [-]
Just checked and out of the 3 major non-JS GC languages, Go and .NET aren't planning to support WASM GC due to non-matching semantics. There's an implementation for Java - TeaVM, which is an AOT Java compiler, that does have production grade support, but isn't aiming for full Java compatibility (not sure what this means in practical terms).
Native interop with JS objects on the JS GC heap isn't supported as well.
WASM will be ready when GNU Hurd succeeds in running the desktop linux of the year. Already 10 years since WASM ... HTML, CSS and JavaScript all had a huge influence. WAS simply has not done so yet.
bobajeff 16 minutes ago [-]
I'm not sure why people are claiming wasm isn't ready. It's just a compiler target like asm.js was. And that's been in use pretty much from the start when they got Unreal Engine, Unity, ffmpeg ported to it. Personally I've run Python + Sympy, Xcas/Giac and Maxima in the browser through this amazing tech.
boomskats 2 hours ago [-]
Ready for what?
WASM is already running in production at a whole bunch of financial services orgs and government infra.
The thing is, it's not running anywhere near HTML, CSS or JavaScript. It's running serverside, mostly on Wasmtime - which, as it happens, is what this post is all about.
troupo 2 hours ago [-]
why.... why would financial services orgs and government infra run anything on wasm serverside?
boomskats 2 hours ago [-]
It's lightweight, capability-secured, services start up way faster, smaller overhead than VMs, better isolation than containers, faster replication, etc.
Yeah, WASM has been a disappointment, and I guess there's a good reason for that. If WASM would've worked as advertised, allowing fully fledged apps to run easily and natively in the browser with no fuss and 90% native perf, then basically all app stores would've been dead.
Native Client, which ran native x86 (but statically verified) code in the browser, basically fit all the criteria, except it wasn't platform agnostic. I'm not married to their approach, but I refuse to believe that this can't be done in a safe and peformant manner.
I guess WASM turned out to be a sandbagging rather than sandboxing technology.
But I eagearly await the arrival of concern trolls who can explain why WASM is slower than JS, and why native threading support is impossible to do securely without imposing limitations, that made sites like itch turn it off, so it might as well not exist.
hypendev 45 minutes ago [-]
> If WASM would've worked as advertised, allowing fully fledged apps to run easily and natively in the browser with no fuss and 90% native perf, then basically all app stores would've been dead.
Working on that! I'm building hypen.space which is platform agnostic language & SDK for building native crossplatform apps.
It's a WASM engine at it's core, and while currently it doesn't have "package this app as wasm" capability but supports streaming/local apps only, that capability is currently being developed - together with WASI layers for all of the platforms.
That way your app can run either as a browser (DOM) app, browser canvas app, native desktop or native mobile app.
It's still early, but moving fast - I just added accessibility support, and the animation framework will be out this week.
Regarding the WASM disappointed, when I started building this about 6 years ago, WASM was in a terrible (barely usable without wasting a ton of time) state. Now that WASI 0.3 is out and LLMs have sped up development by a large margin, it's in a quite usable state to ship things to production without fear.
Rendered at 13:04:43 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
I'm guessing this may be because exceptions exclusively require stack unwinding where as effects require full stack switching.
Seems like there is still progress on that though which gives hope https://github.com/WebAssembly/stack-switching/blob/main/pro...
After a bunch of middle clicking I landed here [0]. So if I understand correctly, the current stack switching proposal depended on exception handling to be implemented first for resume.throw, so that bit was blocked until now.
But it's also further along than you might assume [1], i.e. you can already invoke Wasmtime with `-W stack-switching` and hit the boundaries where the experimental implementation breaks.
Sadly though, like many ambitious Wasm things that don't have revenue directly attached to them, it now seems partly a case of finding someone willing to sponsor or finish the remaining work [2].
I also found the list of open stack-switching issues[3] useful.
(also, minor nit - Wasm != Wasmtime)
[0]: https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/issues/10248
[1]: https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/issues/12941
[2]: https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/issues/12941#is...
[3]: https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/issues?q=state%...
Oh I already know that about WASM now. All is in progress ... perpetual progress.
I'll look again in the next decade.
Native interop with JS objects on the JS GC heap isn't supported as well.
What should be improved: https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues/94420
WASM is already running in production at a whole bunch of financial services orgs and government infra.
The thing is, it's not running anywhere near HTML, CSS or JavaScript. It's running serverside, mostly on Wasmtime - which, as it happens, is what this post is all about.
The original Wasmtime 1.0 blog post explains it all really well: https://bytecodealliance.org/articles/wasmtime-1-0-fast-safe...
Native Client, which ran native x86 (but statically verified) code in the browser, basically fit all the criteria, except it wasn't platform agnostic. I'm not married to their approach, but I refuse to believe that this can't be done in a safe and peformant manner.
I guess WASM turned out to be a sandbagging rather than sandboxing technology.
But I eagearly await the arrival of concern trolls who can explain why WASM is slower than JS, and why native threading support is impossible to do securely without imposing limitations, that made sites like itch turn it off, so it might as well not exist.
Working on that! I'm building hypen.space which is platform agnostic language & SDK for building native crossplatform apps.
It's a WASM engine at it's core, and while currently it doesn't have "package this app as wasm" capability but supports streaming/local apps only, that capability is currently being developed - together with WASI layers for all of the platforms.
That way your app can run either as a browser (DOM) app, browser canvas app, native desktop or native mobile app.
It's still early, but moving fast - I just added accessibility support, and the animation framework will be out this week.
Regarding the WASM disappointed, when I started building this about 6 years ago, WASM was in a terrible (barely usable without wasting a ton of time) state. Now that WASI 0.3 is out and LLMs have sped up development by a large margin, it's in a quite usable state to ship things to production without fear.