[zyedidia]

Is there any AOT WebAssembly compiler that can compile Wasm used by websites? I tried locally compiling the Photoshop Wasm module mentioned in the article but the compilers I tried (Wasmtime, wasm2c, WAMR) all complained about some unsupported Wasm extension/proposal being required (exceptions seems like the blocker on wasmtime, and the others gave cryptic error messages).

Is it really the case that browsers have default-enabled all sorts of extensions that are not yet widely supported by the rest of the ecosystem?

[kevingadd]

> Is there any AOT WebAssembly compiler that can compile Wasm used by websites?

This doesn't really make sense, given that the wasm used by websites is going to import a bunch of JS functions as dependencies. You're not going to have those available in any native environment.

> Is it really the case that browsers have default-enabled all sorts of extensions that are not yet widely supported by the rest of the ecosystem?

Yes

Photoshop in particular is a good example of a bleeding edge wasm app - browsers had to relax restrictions on things like function pointer table size in order for it to work. So I wouldn't expect it to build and run anywhere outside of v8 or spidermonkey.

[zyedidia]

I think one of the interesting aspects of WebAssembly compared to JavaScript is that it can be efficiently AOT-compiled. I've been interested in investigating AOT compilation for a browser (perhaps there is a distant/alternative future where web browsing does not require a JIT), but maybe Wasm AOT compilers aren't really there yet.

[aseipp]

No, I think most of the AOT compilers in practice are a bit behind V8 and/or Spidermonkey for newer features. Realistically, most development driving new WASM features is motivated by website-ish use cases. Exception handling in particular is still not standardized so I guess it's expected that the browser engines would be the one to have the most evolving support (and the ability to test it thoroughly) because people want that platform as their inevitable target anyway.

[Dylan16807]

> Is it really the case that browsers have default-enabled all sorts of extensions that are not yet widely supported by the rest of the ecosystem?

I don't know the answer, but it would be hard to blame them for following normal browser development practices on the standard they created for the purpose of being in browsers.

[zyedidia]

Fair enough. I think it would be unfortunate if the WebAssembly language in browsers were a significantly different language than WebAssembly outside of browsers (just referring to language itself, not the overall runtime system). I don't think that has quite happened, and the outer ecosystem can probably catch up, but it worries me.