af2b4e4946
This commit adds initial support for [WebAssembly Interface
Types][proposal] to wasmtime. This is all intended to be quite
experimental, so experimental in fact that even the name of the
[proposal] is still in flux. (this has otherwise been known as "host
bindings" or "webidl bindings" or "wasm bindings").
The goal of this commit is to start adding support the wasmtime set of
crates for WebAssembly Interface Types. A new `wasmtime-interface-types`
crate has been added with very basic support for dynamically invoking
and inspecting the various bindings of a module. This is in turn powered
by the `wasm-webidl-bindings` crate which is shared with the
`wasm-bindgen` CLI tool as a producer of this section.
Currently the only integration in `wasmtime`-the-binary itself is that
when passed the `--invoke` argument the CLI will now attempt to invoke
the target function with arguments as parsed from the command line
itself. For example if you export a function like:
fn render(&str) -> String
Then passing `--invoke render` will require one argument on the command
line, which is the first argument as a string, and the return value is
printed to the console. This differs from today's interpretation of
`--invoke` where it is a failure if the invoked function takes more than
one argument and the return values are currently ignored.
This is intended to also be the basis of embedding wasmtime in other
contexts which also want to consume WebAssembly interface types. A
Python extension is also added to this repository which implements the
`wasmtime` package on PyPI. This Python extension is intended to make it
as easy as `pip3 install wasmtime` to load a WebAssembly file with
WebAssembly Interface Types into Python. Extensions for other languages
is of course possible as well!
One of the major missing pieces from this is handling imported functions
with interface bindings. Currently the embedding support doesn't have
much ability to support handling imports ergonomically, so it's intended
that this will be included in a follow-up patch.
[proposal]: https://github.com/webassembly/webidl-bindings
Co-authored-by: Yury Delendik <ydelendik@mozilla.com>
Wasmtime: a WebAssembly Runtime.
Wasmtime is a standalone wasm-only runtime for WebAssembly, using the Cranelift JIT.
It runs WebAssembly code outside of the Web, and can be used both as a command-line utility or as a library embedded in a larger application.
Wasmtime passes the WebAssembly spec testsuite, and supports a new system API proposal called WebAssembly System Interface, or WASI.
Wasmtime includes a git submodule; in order to build it, it's necessary to obtain a full checkout, like this:
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/CraneStation/wasmtime.git
To build an optimized version of Wasmtime, use Cargo:
cargo build --release
There are Rust, C, and C++ toolchains that can compile programs with WASI. See the WASI intro for more information, and the WASI tutorial for a tutorial on compiling and running programs using WASI and wasmtime, as well as an overview of the filesystem sandboxing system.
Wasmtime does not yet implement Spectre mitigations, such as those being pioneered by wasmjit, however this is a subject of ongoing research.
Additional goals for Wasmtime include:
- Support a variety of host APIs (not just WASI Core), with fast calling sequences, and develop proposals for additional API modules to be part of WASI. Reference Sysroot.
- Implement the proposed WebAssembly C API.
- Facilitate testing, experimentation, and development around the Cranelift and Lightbeam JITs.
- Develop a native ABI used for compiling WebAssembly suitable for use in both JIT and AOT to native object files.
Including Wasmtime in your project
Wasmtime exposes an API for JIT compilation through the wasmtime-jit subcrate, which depends on wasmtime-environ and wasmtime-runtime for the ABI and runtime support respectively. However, this API is not documented and subject to change. Please use at your own risk!
Build the individual crates as such:
cargo build --package wasmtime-jit
Wasmtime does not currently publish these crates on crates.io. They may be included as a git dependency, like this:
[dependencies]
wasmtime-environ = { git = "https://github.com/CraneStation/wasmtime", rev = "somecommithash" }
wasmtime-runtime = { git = "https://github.com/CraneStation/wasmtime", rev = "somecommithash" }
wasmtime-jit = { git = "https://github.com/CraneStation/wasmtime", rev = "somecommithash" }
All three crates must be specified as dependencies for wasmtime-jit to build correctly, at the moment.
It's Wasmtime.