3 ms·

So how about garbage collection? WASM doesn't have GC in the machine model, right? So either customers have to use a language with manual memory management, wh

by twic 6y ago

So how about garbage collection? WASM doesn't have GC in the machine model, right? So either customers have to use a language with manual memory management, which is hard work, or use one with GC and then compile the collector into their binaries, which means bloat, and possibly a sub-par GC. I guess what I'm saying is that it seems like it would have been better to have used a JVM.

__s 6y ago
https://github.com/WebAssembly/gc/blob/master/proposals/gc/Overview.md https://github.com/WebAssembly/gc/blob/master/proposals/gc/O...
- twic 6y ago
  Something like this seems really important to (some branches of) the future of WASM, but this is still just a proposal, right?
  - azakai 6y ago
    It is still a proposal, but it's one of the proposals most worked on atm, there's a lot of activity.
imtringued 6y ago
How would that work? Secure multi tenancy is a difficult problem in its own right. You would now have to build a security layer outside the JVM because the JVM is exposing too many interfaces. You can use containers but the amount of interfaces a container exposes is still high enough that a container escape is possible. Then you need a security layer on top of containers based on VMs. At this point rolling your own security solution is either going to be highly inefficient because you are allocating too many resources to individual customers or expensive because developing infrastructure management to stay secure doesn't make your company more profitable. Your last hope would be to use an off the shelf solution like firecracker to run each JVM in a VM. Alternatively you can just use a runtime that is sandboxed by default and avoid the cat and mouse game.
atrandom 6y ago
It looks like AssmeblyScript has GC already https://www.assemblyscript.org/runtime.html https://www.assemblyscript.org/runtime.html

3 ms·

So how about garbage collection? WASM doesn't have GC in the machine model, right? So either customers have to use a language with manual memory management, wh

by twic 6y ago

__s 6y ago
https://github.com/WebAssembly/gc/blob/master/proposals/gc/Overview.md https://github.com/WebAssembly/gc/blob/master/proposals/gc/O...
- twic 6y ago
  Something like this seems really important to (some branches of) the future of WASM, but this is still just a proposal, right?
  - azakai 6y ago
    It is still a proposal, but it's one of the proposals most worked on atm, there's a lot of activity.
imtringued 6y ago
How would that work? Secure multi tenancy is a difficult problem in its own right. You would now have to build a security layer outside the JVM because the JVM is exposing too many interfaces. You can use containers but the amount of interfaces a container exposes is still high enough that a container escape is possible. Then you need a security layer on top of containers based on VMs. At this point rolling your own security solution is either going to be highly inefficient because you are allocating too many resources to individual customers or expensive because developing infrastructure management to stay secure doesn't make your company more profitable. Your last hope would be to use an off the shelf solution like firecracker to run each JVM in a VM. Alternatively you can just use a runtime that is sandboxed by default and avoid the cat and mouse game.
atrandom 6y ago
It looks like AssmeblyScript has GC already https://www.assemblyscript.org/runtime.html https://www.assemblyscript.org/runtime.html