Does nginx have any (third-party?) modules that are roughly equivalent to this?
mod_wasm: Run WebAssembly with Apache
11–20 of 54 posts
Re: mod_wasm: Run WebAssembly with Apache
#12What is the actual problem this is trying to solve? Are there programming languages it was previously hard to write web apps in? Do people not like setting up nginx? From my understanding the benefit of wasm on the server side is generally that you get the sandboxing inherent in the VM. Why would you want that in the context of Apache? Are people planning on running untrusted code? If mod_wasm is designed to address…
One of the reasons PHP gained so much traction was because it is very easy to deploy and run, no dependency hell. WASM is self-contained and has the same property.
Re: mod_wasm: Run WebAssembly with Apache
#13No post body was provided.
Re: mod_wasm: Run WebAssembly with Apache
#14What is the actual problem this is trying to solve? Are there programming languages it was previously hard to write web apps in? Do people not like setting up nginx? From my understanding the benefit of wasm on the server side is generally that you get the sandboxing inherent in the VM. Why would you want that in the context of Apache? Are people planning on running untrusted code? If mod_wasm is designed to address…
Running WebAssembly modules in Apache http server allows devs to run many different languages by targetting Wasm. This includes interpreted languages like the Python example from the article.
With the WebAssembly sandboxing capabilities you're getting a high level of isolation without adding overhead to the system. VMs and Containers require to run more complex environment for runnning the code. And even you're running trusted code, sandboxing is still relevant as vulnerabilities in source code can let attackers gain unexpected privileges.
mod_wasm was created to bring these benefits to Apache. We found this project interesting as this expands the Apache capabilities while keeping things secure :)
Re: mod_wasm: Run WebAssembly with Apache
#15Is that the same shared nothing architecture just like when I am invoking a php script via cgi call or mod-php?
Re: mod_wasm: Run WebAssembly with Apache
#16I struggle to understand wasm, though I'm interested. What does this part mean? > Internally, it uses the wasmtime runtime to configure, initialize, and run the Wasm modules. What is wasmtime? I looked at its page and couldn't figure out what they mean by a wasm runtime. I thought the runtime was in the browser. Wouldn't a user just need to compile and just a binary?
> I thought the runtime was in the browser.
It can be both! Like JavaScript, WebAssembly started in the browser but is now moving to the server-side, too. With JavaScript, the most common serverside runtime is Node.js. With WebAssembly, it's Wasmtime. There are alternatives (like Deno or Bun for serverside JavaScript), but Wasmtime is the main one at the moment.
Re: mod_wasm: Run WebAssembly with Apache
#17What is the actual problem this is trying to solve? Are there programming languages it was previously hard to write web apps in? Do people not like setting up nginx? From my understanding the benefit of wasm on the server side is generally that you get the sandboxing inherent in the VM. Why would you want that in the context of Apache? Are people planning on running untrusted code? If mod_wasm is designed to address…
Think in the minimum container you need to run some Python code (>300MB?). Now, compare that to just the Python interpreter compiled into Wasm (25MB). If you need deploy that into different nodes, that's a huge difference.
Also, Wasm modules don't have cold-starts as containers.
Regarding running untrusted code, ask the folks at AWS, Azure or Google Cloud dealing with that...
Re: mod_wasm: Run WebAssembly with Apache
#18I struggle to understand wasm, though I'm interested. What does this part mean? > Internally, it uses the wasmtime runtime to configure, initialize, and run the Wasm modules. What is wasmtime? I looked at its page and couldn't figure out what they mean by a wasm runtime. I thought the runtime was in the browser. Wouldn't a user just need to compile and just a binary?
It is a runtime for wasm. Wasm is not executable in the same way an x86 binary is. It needs to run in a vm. Wasmtime is one such vm. In a browser context that vm is v8. https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime
Or for Firefox, SpiderMonkey JIT.
V8 is a chrome-specific thingie.
Re: mod_wasm: Run WebAssembly with Apache
#19I struggle to understand wasm, though I'm interested. What does this part mean? > Internally, it uses the wasmtime runtime to configure, initialize, and run the Wasm modules. What is wasmtime? I looked at its page and couldn't figure out what they mean by a wasm runtime. I thought the runtime was in the browser. Wouldn't a user just need to compile and just a binary?
> I thought the runtime was in the browser. It can be both! Like JavaScript, WebAssembly started in the browser but is now moving to the server-side, too. With JavaScript, the most common serverside runtime is Node.js. With WebAssembly, it's Wasmtime. There are alternatives (like Deno or Bun for serverside JavaScript), but Wasmtime is the main one at the moment.
Thanks the NodeJS analogy helps me.
Re: mod_wasm: Run WebAssembly with Apache
#20What is the actual problem this is trying to solve? Are there programming languages it was previously hard to write web apps in? Do people not like setting up nginx? From my understanding the benefit of wasm on the server side is generally that you get the sandboxing inherent in the VM. Why would you want that in the context of Apache? Are people planning on running untrusted code? If mod_wasm is designed to address…
One of the reasons PHP gained so much traction was because it is very easy to deploy and run, no dependency hell. WASM is self-contained and has the same property.
Now it is the battle of keeping the zillions of JavaScript packages vs PHP packages up … to … date.
I think WASM may have bigger problems with external vulnerability assessment team identifying those modules by version that got broken.