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WASM will replace containers

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Re: WASM will replace containers

#21

Post by gigel82 »

No it won't. People primarily deploy containers for full fat native server applications containing tons of proprietary code and libraries and sometimes specialized hardware access (GPU, etc.).

It would be immensely silly to run full x86 emulators in WebAssembly and go through 2 layers of transpiling / interpreting for what can run natively on the host's CPU.

This argument always reminds me of "Square Hole!" video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pDH66X3ClA (just because you can make it fit, it doesn't mean you should do it).

Re: WASM will replace containers

#22

Post by diego_moita »

Hmm, not sure...

Author's argument is "because it is easier today and will be as powerful as containers in the future".

Well, what about it gets as powerful but 3 times more complex? Frankly, I find it quite messy to develop WASM in C++ without downloading an emscripten ...container. Yeah, AFAIK, there is no WASM compiler in WASM.

Oh an there is the *in the browser*, also. Yeah, but the truth of the matter is that most WASM frameworks have a mediocre performance when compared to JS (because of the memory isolation).

In this job we love new projects. We like them so much that we keep forgetting that the vast majority of them fail.

Re: WASM will replace containers

#23

Post by resonious »

not2b wrote: post #13

"The main thing holding back wider adoption is a lack of system interfaces. File access, networking, etc. But it's just a matter of time before these features get integrated." But then you've got to figure out and prevent all the security holes that can be introduced by adding file access, networking, etc. That's what killed the Java write-once, run-anywhere promise. Maybe put the whole thing into a container? Oops,…

This is what I was thinking. WASM is a good replacement for containers because it doesn't have these things.

Re: WASM will replace containers

#24

Post by hardwaregeek »

When? We’ve been talking about wasm for years. When are we actually getting this future? It’s been 8 years since wasm 1.0, and still we don’t have a stable, easy to use toolchain. Rust has maybe the best support and I still can’t get a basic async application with tokio to work on wasm.

To put it into context, Rust was released in 2012. 8 years later it was stable, had a solid toolchain and plenty of people using it in production. Wasm still feels like a toy compared to that

Re: WASM will replace containers

#26

Post by trescenzi »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #15
trescenzi wrote: post #5

Containers have two goals: reproducibility/portability, and encapsulation. WASM could replace the reproducibility but it can't replace the encapsulation. > My money is on WebAssembly (WASM) to replace containers. It already has in some places. WebAssembly is a true write-once-run-anywhere experience. (Anywhere that can spin up a V8 engine, which is a lot of places these days.) Luckily a container is a place that can…

> … it can't replace the encapsulation. Can you explain your thoughts here? WebAssembly is sandboxed and effort must be expended to provide a mechanism for getting data through that boundary. How does that differ from “encapsulation?”

I'm referring to a different kind of encapsulation. Dependencies, tools, version management, configurations, environment variables, etc. Even if you can fully compile your code into WASM and host it on V8 you need to ship it with configuration files, set specific environment variables and so on. Containers allow you to bundle all of that together into a single unit you can share with others.

Re: WASM will replace containers

#27

Post by bbkane »

jsheard wrote: post #12
ok_dad wrote: post #3

We’re still using COBOL mainframes in 2025 in places so I’m sure whatever is the next trend in computing will be great, but I’m sure we’ll still be using k8s (and COBOL) in 2125.

> but I’m sure we’ll still be using k8s (and COBOL) in 2125. If you want a vision of the future, imagine a bare metal hypervisor hosting Linux hosting K8S hosting V8 hosting a WASM-based IBM mainframe emulator running COBOL.

This reminds me of the K8s keynote where Kelsey Hightower runs Fortran in K8s- https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oNa3xK2GFKY . It's a fun watch!

Re: WASM will replace containers

#28

Post by aftbit »

trescenzi wrote: post #26
jagged-chisel wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> … it can't replace the encapsulation. Can you explain your thoughts here? WebAssembly is sandboxed and effort must be expended to provide a mechanism for getting data through that boundary. How does that differ from “encapsulation?”

I'm referring to a different kind of encapsulation. Dependencies, tools, version management, configurations, environment variables, etc. Even if you can fully compile your code into WASM and host it on V8 you need to ship it with configuration files, set specific environment variables and so on. Containers allow you to bundle all of that together into a single unit you can share with others.

Unless you run the build in WASM itself. Are there any self-hosting WASM build chains?

Re: WASM will replace containers

#30

Post by mavdi »

birdiesanders wrote: post #17

The author has not seemingly considered the vastly different networking in wasm. You don’t have networking. There is an entirely different utility in these environments, containers are meant to host applications, wasm is an application. Don’t even get me started on disk access, env handling, etc. wasi is great, for the places it does well. It is not a replacement for writing a pure golang/rust/c/julia app and running…

Anyone comes up with any shit these days, say apples will replace oranges.

“ChatGPT make me sound confident”

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