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1392 :: Any chance there will be a wasm backend?

• runvnc (orginal) [2015-07-02T05:24:18+02:00] view original

  I wonder if someone could make a Web Assembly (wasm) backend for Nim. I would like to work on that as soon as I get my genius-level slave delivered.

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• Araq (orginal) [2015-07-02T10:58:40+02:00] view original

  Is there even a spec available for that that is not constantly moving? Do actual implementations already exist? Even if I wanted to, I have no idea how to work on a wasm backend.

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• andrea (orginal) [2015-07-02T17:33:55+02:00] view original

  I think it is a valuable target, but it may take a while before the design settles down (for instance - how does the wasm interact with the browser gc?). Even then, it may be more convenient to compile to clang C and then use emscripten

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• v3ss0n (orginal) [2015-07-04T12:31:00+02:00] view original

  Spec is far from stable. it will be a long shot.

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• runvnc (orginal) [2016-10-31T22:51:14+01:00] view original

  In case anyone thinks web assembly is interesting as a Nim backend or for playing around generally, they came out with a browser preview milestone today. http://v8project.blogspot.com/2016/10/webassembly-browser-preview.html?m=1

  So I believe I read that the binary format is basically stable now. Of course the simplest way to use Nim code is emscripten which now supports web assembly. They also have the S-expression wast2wasm tool and this https://github.com/WebAssembly/binaryen/wiki/Compiling-to-WebAssembly-with-Binaryen#cfg-api which to me actually the fun thing would be to go more directly from Nim to the bytes. Directly meaning skipping the external tools.

  Anyway, at least if someone is learning or something and wants to experiment with program compilation generally, if they happen to know about Nim and web assembly, they seem (to me) like an interesting target. Which I may play with it a bit in a non-serious way.

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