Go gets preliminary WebAssembly support

#1

Post by ricksnyke » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 9:49 PM UTC

Go gets preliminary WebAssembly support
go-review.googlesource.com

Re: Go gets preliminary WebAssembly support

#2

Post by hasharray » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 10:16 PM UTC

This is great; looks like it's still fairly rough but interesting that GC languages are making due with what's there in the MVP of WebAssembly right now.

Wonder how it works? does it use the regular call stacks or construct it's own and so on?

Re: Go gets preliminary WebAssembly support

#3

Post by jhoechtl » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 10:21 PM UTC

A GCed language Go is with split stack semantics Webassembly will only be a second class citizen.

Re: Go gets preliminary WebAssembly support

#4

Post by helper » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 10:23 PM UTC

hasharray wrote: post #2

This is great; looks like it's still fairly rough but interesting that GC languages are making due with what's there in the MVP of WebAssembly right now. Wonder how it works? does it use the regular call stacks or construct it's own and so on?

The design doc talks some about how this works: https://docs.google.com/document/d/131vjr4DH6JFnb-blm_uRdaC0...

Re: Go gets preliminary WebAssembly support

#5

Post by recursive » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 10:26 PM UTC

jhoechtl wrote: post #3

A GCed language Go is with split stack semantics Webassembly will only be a second class citizen.

This looks like two or three sentences mashed together. I can't figure out how to parse it.

Re: Go gets preliminary WebAssembly support

#6

Post by crudbug » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 10:40 PM UTC

What are the challenges to provide a standard GC interface that all managed languages can leverage.

Re: Go gets preliminary WebAssembly support

#7

Post by misterbowfinger » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 10:44 PM UTC

Hey so question - WebAssembly can't access the DOM right? What's the whole point then, avoid Javascript? If we can't just swap out all the gnarly JS garbage whole-hog, I don't see where the business value is, given that there's plenty of language-to-js libraries.

Re: Go gets preliminary WebAssembly support

#8

Post by _greim_ » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 10:47 PM UTC

hasharray wrote: post #2

This is great; looks like it's still fairly rough but interesting that GC languages are making due with what's there in the MVP of WebAssembly right now. Wonder how it works? does it use the regular call stacks or construct it's own and so on?

From this: https://docs.google.com/document/d/131vjr4DH6JFnb-blm_uRdaC0...

> Go’s garbage collection is fully supported. WebAssembly is planning to add its own garbage collection, but it is hard to imagine that it would yield a better performance than Go’s own GC which is specifically tailored to Go’s needs.

Presumably a runtime will be compiled into the wasm output, including Go's garbage collector.

Re: Go gets preliminary WebAssembly support

#9

Post by Dayshine » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 10:51 PM UTC

misterbowfinger wrote: post #7

Hey so question - WebAssembly can't access the DOM right? What's the whole point then, avoid Javascript? If we can't just swap out all the gnarly JS garbage whole-hog, I don't see where the business value is, given that there's plenty of language-to-js libraries.

>language-to-js libraries

With huge performance cost and complicated toolchains.

Re: Go gets preliminary WebAssembly support

#10

Post by chrissnell » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 10:51 PM UTC

Could this be used to get native gRPC support for the browser?