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WASI 0.3

bytecodealliance.org

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Re: WASI 0.3

#21

Post by bearjaws »

shevy-java wrote: post #2

Will WebAssembly ever achieve a real breakthrough? It's been almost 10 years since it came around. HTML, CSS and JavaScript were a breakthrough back in the days. WebAssembly still is not right now; only very few folks or companies use it.

I'm building a game where you learn to program golang or python and it all runs in webassembly, this way any student chromebook can just pick up and go.

That feels pretty revolutionary, no need to setup your local system to get core concepts.

Even have plans to use postgres in WASM (pglite), and I know a few real time apps use sqlite in WASM.

Re: WASI 0.3

#22

Post by utopiah »

lifty wrote: post #12

If you have used WASI in the past, can you mention your use case? Very curious if you found it to give you an edge compared to other sandboxing like containers or VMs.

I tinkered with https://extism.org and basically the use case is that they suggest, namely you can extend software in another programming language but without having to setup a container or VMs on the client. They "just" run the code in the browser and it can be JavaScript, sure, but can also be Python, Go, whatever.

It's quite specific though as I'm working on support programming in the browser.

If you are not deep into letting a very specific kind of user extend, it's probably overkill.

Even then it's a very VERY niche thing because it has to be simultaneously :

- someone who is opinionated about a programming language (either because they know too much, i.e. expert, or not enough, i.e beginner)

- is dedicated enough to want to try to build something on top of an existing system

- does not want to bother with solutions you mentioned

Re: WASI 0.3

#23

Post by airstrike »

lifty wrote: post #12

If you have used WASI in the past, can you mention your use case? Very curious if you found it to give you an edge compared to other sandboxing like containers or VMs.

Extending my Rust binary with a marketplace of WASM-based extensions like VSCode

Re: WASI 0.3

#24

Post by airstrike »

b33j0r wrote: post #11

Love/hate with this one. How was I supposed to follow this? I tried, and few things were publicly visible for nearly two years. I last checked in march and it looked like no progress had been made. That makes me very suspicious of wasiv3. Funny enough, I already implemented a bunch of the promises (pun not intended) and think that freestanding wasm with custom integrations is the more likely future. The promise of wa…

It's version 0.3...

Re: WASI 0.3

#25

Post by Dwedit »

shevy-java wrote: post #2

Will WebAssembly ever achieve a real breakthrough? It's been almost 10 years since it came around. HTML, CSS and JavaScript were a breakthrough back in the days. WebAssembly still is not right now; only very few folks or companies use it.

WebAssembly doesn't beat JavaScript in performance, and that is embarrassing.

Re: WASI 0.3

#26

Post by hectaman »

b33j0r wrote: post #11

Love/hate with this one. How was I supposed to follow this? I tried, and few things were publicly visible for nearly two years. I last checked in march and it looked like no progress had been made. That makes me very suspicious of wasiv3. Funny enough, I already implemented a bunch of the promises (pun not intended) and think that freestanding wasm with custom integrations is the more likely future. The promise of wa…

I don't think it's fair to say this work has happened in the shadows. I work on CNCF wasmCloud, and I know how hard we try to make this content available.

- Many standing meetings organized around SIGs, all on the public community calendar: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0/newembed?src=events...

- A dedicated Zulip: https://bytecodealliance.zulipchat.com/

- Conferences organized around exactly these topics: Wasm Day, WasmCon, Wasm I/O, and the Bytecode Alliance Plumbers Summit

- CNCF projects: wasmCloud, Spin

- Blogs, many with recordings, summaries, and transcripts: https://bytecodealliance.org/articles/the-road-to-component-..., https://wasmcloud.com/community/, https://spinframework.dev/blog/index

If you want the architectural direction straight from the source, Luke Wagner's keynotes are the best place to start:

- "What is a Component (and Why)?" (WasmCon 2023): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAACYA1Mwv4

- "The Path to Components": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phodPLY8zNE

- "Towards a Component Model 1.0" (Wasm I/O 2026): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq0Auw01tH8

I mean this, though - what else would you like to see to try and make the content and process more accessible? Are there communities that are doing this really well that we could use for inspiration?

Re: WASI 0.3

#28

Post by Rochus »

modulovalue wrote: post #6
shevy-java wrote: post #2

Will WebAssembly ever achieve a real breakthrough? It's been almost 10 years since it came around. HTML, CSS and JavaScript were a breakthrough back in the days. WebAssembly still is not right now; only very few folks or companies use it.

It's already a breakthrough in my opinion. Many things are possible that weren't possible before. For example, I was able to compile the Dart VM (the compiler + analyzer + VM) to wasm and run it on the web: https://github.com/modulovalue/dart-live it supports hot reload and many other cool features. It runs essentially everywhere and it's a very bare proof of concept for a fully integrated programming development sys…

> I was able to compile the Dart VM (the compiler + analyzer + VM) to wasm and run it on the web

Is this really a representative use-case of WASM/WASI? Would'n it be much better to compile Dart to WASM (the Dart SDK even supports "dart compile wasm")?

Re: WASI 0.3

#29

Post by kettlecorn »

Dwedit wrote: post #25
shevy-java wrote: post #2

Will WebAssembly ever achieve a real breakthrough? It's been almost 10 years since it came around. HTML, CSS and JavaScript were a breakthrough back in the days. WebAssembly still is not right now; only very few folks or companies use it.

WebAssembly doesn't beat JavaScript in performance, and that is embarrassing.

That's not accurate. I Googled for a recent performance benchmark and found this which indicates Wasm offers a notable performance gain: https://medium.com/@hashbyt/webassembly-vs-javascript-perfor...

Re: WASI 0.3

#30

Post by ilaksh »

Is there some Zig code demonstrating how to use all the changes in a Zig program that compiles to WASI 0.3.0?
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