Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

WebAssembly: Docker Without Containers

wasmlabs.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 313 posts

Re: WebAssembly: Docker Without Containers

#11

Post by nkozyra »

pulse7 wrote: post #9
tony-allan wrote: post #2

If WASM+WASI existed in 2008, we wouldn't have needed to create Docker. That's how important it is. WebAssembly on the server is the future of computing. - Solomon Hykes (co-founder of Docker) https://twitter.com/solomonstre/status/1111004913222324225

If this statement is true, there is no need for Docker, because JVM+JAR existed in 2008! Docker can do more than WASM or JVM+JAR: it can run non-WASM and non-JVM apps like PostgreSQL, etc...

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but my thought was he was suggesting that the host/VM could be written in WASM, which could then run any arbitrary thing as Docker does today.

Re: WebAssembly: Docker Without Containers

#13

Post by krona »

pulse7 wrote: post #9
tony-allan wrote: post #2

If WASM+WASI existed in 2008, we wouldn't have needed to create Docker. That's how important it is. WebAssembly on the server is the future of computing. - Solomon Hykes (co-founder of Docker) https://twitter.com/solomonstre/status/1111004913222324225

If this statement is true, there is no need for Docker, because JVM+JAR existed in 2008! Docker can do more than WASM or JVM+JAR: it can run non-WASM and non-JVM apps like PostgreSQL, etc...

JNI? The JVM doesn't sandbox native code, nor can you target the JVM with (for example) GCC. So what are you referring to?

Re: WebAssembly: Docker Without Containers

#14

Post by angelmm »

pulse7 wrote: post #9
tony-allan wrote: post #2

If WASM+WASI existed in 2008, we wouldn't have needed to create Docker. That's how important it is. WebAssembly on the server is the future of computing. - Solomon Hykes (co-founder of Docker) https://twitter.com/solomonstre/status/1111004913222324225

If this statement is true, there is no need for Docker, because JVM+JAR existed in 2008! Docker can do more than WASM or JVM+JAR: it can run non-WASM and non-JVM apps like PostgreSQL, etc...

Docker already have the community, tools and distribution layer. You can think as Wasm as another resource that can be run in Docker as it's today. You continue using the same tools with a new way of packaging and run applications / runtimes.

Re: WebAssembly: Docker Without Containers

#15

Post by zozbot234 »

tony-allan wrote: post #2

If WASM+WASI existed in 2008, we wouldn't have needed to create Docker. That's how important it is. WebAssembly on the server is the future of computing. - Solomon Hykes (co-founder of Docker) https://twitter.com/solomonstre/status/1111004913222324225

Docker containers will still be far more efficient than something which has to be interpreted in a VM. The real advantage of WASM/WASI is architecture independence - and perhaps some kind of trusted verification of proof assertions in the code, which would of course be easier in a VM compared to trying to verify actual binary assembly.

Re: WebAssembly: Docker Without Containers

#16

Post by ridruejo »

pulse7 wrote: post #9
tony-allan wrote: post #2

If WASM+WASI existed in 2008, we wouldn't have needed to create Docker. That's how important it is. WebAssembly on the server is the future of computing. - Solomon Hykes (co-founder of Docker) https://twitter.com/solomonstre/status/1111004913222324225

If this statement is true, there is no need for Docker, because JVM+JAR existed in 2008! Docker can do more than WASM or JVM+JAR: it can run non-WASM and non-JVM apps like PostgreSQL, etc...

"and non-JVM apps like PostgreSQL" PostgreSQL can (and has) been compiled to Wasm! It was on HN a couple of months ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33067962

Re: WebAssembly: Docker Without Containers

#17

Post by zozbot234 »

krona wrote: post #13
pulse7 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this statement is true, there is no need for Docker, because JVM+JAR existed in 2008! Docker can do more than WASM or JVM+JAR: it can run non-WASM and non-JVM apps like PostgreSQL, etc...

JNI? The JVM doesn't sandbox native code, nor can you target the JVM with (for example) GCC. So what are you referring to?

Why do you need JNI? You could just compile C-like code to run on the JVM using a byte[] array as the equivalent of memory. This is similar to how high-performance Java code is written already, to ensure that GC is completely out of the way.

In fact GCC used to have a JVM target, called GCJ. It was removed due to lack of maintenance.

Re: WebAssembly: Docker Without Containers

#18

Post by lucideer »

pulse7 wrote: post #9
tony-allan wrote: post #2

If WASM+WASI existed in 2008, we wouldn't have needed to create Docker. That's how important it is. WebAssembly on the server is the future of computing. - Solomon Hykes (co-founder of Docker) https://twitter.com/solomonstre/status/1111004913222324225

If this statement is true, there is no need for Docker, because JVM+JAR existed in 2008! Docker can do more than WASM or JVM+JAR: it can run non-WASM and non-JVM apps like PostgreSQL, etc...

> JVM+JAR existed

JVM can only run apps written for it: Docker & WASM don't have that limitation.

> it can run non-WASM and non-JVM apps like PostgreSQL, etc...

but WASM can run Postgres

Re: WebAssembly: Docker Without Containers

#19

Post by ridruejo »

Cloudef wrote: post #6
tony-allan wrote: post #2

If WASM+WASI existed in 2008, we wouldn't have needed to create Docker. That's how important it is. WebAssembly on the server is the future of computing. - Solomon Hykes (co-founder of Docker) https://twitter.com/solomonstre/status/1111004913222324225

Expect now you need to compile / port everything to WASM+WASI...

Right now is tricky and looks like a Rube-Goldberg machine to get many things running. However, it is getting easier and easier to do so. Eventually you will not have to do the compilation itself, but there will be plenty of Wasm binaries ready to use. This will be similar to Linux, most people don't compile the source code for apps from scratch, just use the distro package manager

Re: WebAssembly: Docker Without Containers

#20

Post by ZitchDog »

lucideer wrote: post #18
pulse7 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this statement is true, there is no need for Docker, because JVM+JAR existed in 2008! Docker can do more than WASM or JVM+JAR: it can run non-WASM and non-JVM apps like PostgreSQL, etc...

> JVM+JAR existed JVM can only run apps written for it: Docker & WASM don't have that limitation. > it can run non-WASM and non-JVM apps like PostgreSQL, etc... but WASM can run Postgres

Source?
Post reply on HN