Standardizing WASI: A system interface to run WebAssembly outside the web

Post by chrisseaton » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 11:18 PM UTC

yellowapple wrote: post #170

chrisseaton wrote: post #160

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> The JVM doesn't run languages that weren't designed for it, like C or C++ or Rust. You can run all those languages on top of the JVM! The JVM also runs many other languages which weren't designed for it, like Ruby and Python.

> You can run all those languages on top of the JVM! Do you have a source for this? I'm sure it's theoretically possible in a Turing-completeness sense, but considering Java lacks any concept whatsoever of a pointer, and considering that most (if not effectively all) C code uses pointers pretty extensively, I find it unlikely that this statement is meaningfully true without some severe efficiency penalties.

Post by comex » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 11:28 PM UTC

sunfish wrote: post #101

a1369209993 wrote: post #84

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How will you deal with valid paths such as: /tmp/[DE][AD][BE][EF].txt # ext2 / linux # OR C:\stuff\[DEED][FFFE].txt # ntfs / windows # where [hex] indicates a single filesystem charater with that value

One fun thing about the capability model is that at the system call level, there are no absolute paths. All filesystem path references are relative to base directory handles. So even if an application thinks it wants something in C:\stuff, it's the job of the libraries linked into the application to map that to something that can actually be named. So there's room for the ecosystem to innovate, above the WASI syscall…

Post by saagarjha » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 11:37 PM UTC

tokyodude wrote: post #83

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #44

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I think the browser shouldn't be a platform at all, frankly, and WASI is one possible way we can finally stop trying to shoehorn it into being one. If everything runs a WASI runtime, which is designed to run applications from the ground up, there really isn't any need for the browser to run applications anymore, is there?

I think the world in which the browser disappears and all we have is apps is a worse world than the one we have now. With HTML/CSS we get the relatively easy ability to add extensions to dig deep into the data of a page. One of my favorite extensions is rikaikun which adds popup translation of Japanese words. It can only do this because it can inspect a standardized data structure (the DOM) with standardized APIs. I…

Post by appcypher » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 11:48 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #171

yellowapple wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can run all those languages on top of the JVM! Do you have a source for this? I'm sure it's theoretically possible in a Turing-completeness sense, but considering Java lacks any concept whatsoever of a pointer, and considering that most (if not effectively all) C code uses pointers pretty extensively, I find it unlikely that this statement is meaningfully true without some severe efficiency penalties.

For example Sulong runs C, C++, Rust https://llvm.org/devmtg/2016-01/slides/Sulong.pdf . I use it to run unmodified C extensions for the Ruby programming language on top of the JVM. Truffle C is another example https://www.manuelrigger.at/downloads/trufflec_thesis.pdf .

Post by Touche » Thu, Mar 28, 2019, 12:23 AM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #146

Touche wrote: post #119

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Eh, I'm not trying to discourage you from building cool apps on top of WASI. I just hope you understand what you're up against. And most of it is not technical; you've got to convince Apple to include a WASI runtime on iOS (among others).

Just like any new feature added to the web standard requires that Apple actually implement it in Safari, right? I'm not really pro-WASI so much as I am against the idea that the browser is a good application platform.