compile the core to WebAssembly

[smallstepman]

How feasable it would be to compile this to webassembly (leaving GUI aside - i.e. compiling only the core/backend)? Additional GUI in JS would have to get written.

This would setup a path which leads to having PrusaSlicer embedded inside other web clients, like octoprint, fluidd, mainsail etc.

[Tristaan]

Hello @smallstepman! I too am interested in this "feature-request". But as PrusaSlicer has many dependencies, which also need to be compiled to WebAssembly it is a hard task to do. Maybe someone could shed more light on the situation.

EDIT: So i've done some investigations compiling with emscripten and got some of the deps to build:

[  6%] Built target dep_EXPAT
[ 11%] Built target dep_ZLIB
[ 15%] Built target dep_Cereal
[ 15%] Built target dep_MPFR
[ 22%] Built target dep_GLEW
[ 27%] Built target dep_NLopt
[ 31%] Built target dep_Qhull
[ 35%] Built target dep_JPEG

The other deps don't build. After looking at them, the problem with some of them lies that a wrong CXX compiler config is used, or some other em++ issue. Some also throw errors.

The deps not configuring are:

• [ 1%] Performing configure step for 'dep_GMP'
• [ 36%] Performing configure step for 'dep_OpenCSG'
• [ 36%] Performing configure step for 'dep_OpenEXR'
• [ 37%] Performing configure step for 'dep_PNG'
• [ 40%] Performing configure step for 'dep_CURL'

The deps not building are:

• [ 16%] Performing build step for 'dep_Boost'
• [ 16%] Performing build step for 'dep_TBB'
• [ 38%] Performing build step for 'dep_Blosc'

EDIT: I Got Boost to build with .jam file modifications, a toolset for b2 called emscripten exists. GMP is also compileable after changing the host to none (--host=none) and modifying ./configure to execute a.wasm with wasm-shell. More deps working out of the box added. PNG building with PNG.cmake modifications. CURL is problematic as it requires OpenSSL, which is not built before it.