WAMR integration & WASM/WASI compilers

[KaruroChori]

Or the real Path of Pain with even less rewards at the end.

The integration of WAMR should enable vs:

• To download distributed toolchains for arbitrary languages supporting wasm as target, and run them in pipelines
• To run embedded scripts in such languages or pre-compiled ones (unlike the other runtimes).
• To run native components compiled for wasm, not really for safety in this case but for portability. All this is technically feasible, and would be more or less as complex as the other integration have been so far.

Subtasks:

• [x] Integrate an engine (WAMR)
• [ ] Find a way to have llvm/clang running as wasm an build to wasm (no emscripten) spoiler, not working
• [ ] Find a way to integrate assemblyscript as a language and embeding the compiler ahah. not even close

However...

Issues with WASM

Why is WASM so frustrating to work with!?! Virtually no compiler can compile itself into a functional wasm/wasi binary.
I am starting to regret the portability of java bytecode already. I never considered this day would have come.

AssemblyScript is barely able to do so with some magic tricks, but it still requires binaryen distributed alongside. Because of that, V8 is virtually the only runtime capable of running that combo.

There are also some LLVM patches to support wasm/wasi, but they all have been failures so far (at best half working). Aside from the fact it would end up being quite slow.

Notice: the wasmer registry seems to have a small collection of clang builds on it. It might be good enough to start experimenting.

If you have insights to share, please do that because I am really out of ideas.

[andy5995]

Not wanting to cause you any more pain, but I'll tell you that I don't have experience with anything you mentioned above. My friend @Jammyjamjamman might wanna have a glance and see if he's interested though.

[KaruroChori]

No worries, those attempts were made few weeks ago, long enough for me to heal :D.