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It does feel like WebAssembly development has stalled after the initial release. There are proposals for reference types, garbage collection, and host bindings

by wffurr 6y ago

It does feel like WebAssembly development has stalled after the initial release. There are proposals for reference types, garbage collection, and host bindings that would greatly expand a WebAssembly binary's capabilities, but they haven't been implemented in any browser, much less standardized yet. WebAssembly proposals tracker: https://github.com/WebAssembly/proposals https://github.com/WebAssembly/proposals WebAssembly reference types (https://github.com/WebAssembly/reference-types/blob/master/proposals/reference-types/Overview.md https://github.com/WebAssembly/reference-types/blob/master/p...) looks like the blocker for a lot of things, and it's in the final spec phase at least. In Chrome, it's behind a flag since 78, which went stable in Oct 22 2019: https://chromestatus.com/features/5166497248837632 https://chromestatus.com/features/5166497248837632 But also under active development? https://bugs.chromium.org/p/v8/issues/detail?id=7581 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/v8/issues/detail?id=7581 Supposedly implemented in Firefox two years ago: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1444925 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1444925 Nothing in Safari, of course. Where is it now though?

Rochus 6y ago
That is also my impression. And the fact that Mozilla has problems and has to realign is certainly not helping.
maxgraey 6y ago
> but they haven't been implemented in any browser, much less standardized yet. Reference types already implemented. GC is not really needed for non-managed languages like C++ or Rust. Interface types in progress. See this: https://webassembly.org/roadmap https://webassembly.org/roadmap
wtetzner 6y ago
I'm still waiting for tail call optimization. By not having support for it, a bunch of languages are either forced to not bother with WASM, or have to do something like trampolines and give up performance.

by wffurr 6y ago

Rochus 6y ago

That is also my impression. And the fact that Mozilla has problems and has to realign is certainly not helping.

maxgraey 6y ago

> but they haven't been implemented in any browser, much less standardized yet. Reference types already implemented. GC is not really needed for non-managed languages like C++ or Rust. Interface types in progress. See this: https://webassembly.org/roadmap https://webassembly.org/roadmap

wtetzner 6y ago

I'm still waiting for tail call optimization. By not having support for it, a bunch of languages are either forced to not bother with WASM, or have to do something like trampolines and give up performance.