7 ms·

Wasmer – Run, Publish and Deploy any code, anywhere

121 points by gorenb 3y ago

mitchbob 3y ago
Previous discussions: Wasmer 1.0 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25649476 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25649476 (161 comments) Wasmer 2.0 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27537541 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27537541 (56 comments) Wasmer 3.0 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33721685 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33721685 (183 comments)
- houseatrielah 3y ago
  Wasmer 3.0 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33721685 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33721685
  - mitchbob 3y ago
    Thanks! Fixed.
fragmede 3y ago
I'm probably holding it wrong, but the website has a dropdown for CLI, but CLI is the only option in that dropdown, which is at odds with "Run... anywhere" in the headline.
- CharlesW 3y ago
  That widget is wonky for me too, but if you go to the runtime page (https://wasmer.io/products/runtime https://wasmer.io/products/runtime) you'll see SDKs for Rust, Python, JavaScript, Go, Ruby, and C.
  - fragmede 3y ago
    That's the languages. I'm expecting/hoping to be able to run it in the CLI, web browser, native GUI, mobile, and on an ESP32.
    - CharlesW 3y ago
      It’s a developer “product”, so you can package it however you like.
- syrusakbary 3y ago
  You are completely right... we need to improve that! We are planning to add more languages there once the SDKs are fully ready... stay tuned :)
debarshri 3y ago
It feels very close to docker equivalent for WASM binaries which is very cool. I think this might be the breakthrough required to make wasm server-side very mainstream. I think there is still complexity and standardization issues on compilation side. When that is solved then server-side wasm would be ready for democratization I think.
- skybrian 3y ago
  The technology is interesting, but I've never bothered to install it. It seems like this ecosystem is missing compelling reasons to use it, sort of like a device or app store that's missing interesting apps. The demo they put on the front page doesn't really sell it. I already have Python installed. It's need that they got it running, but how is this better? What would sell it? Suppose there were a well-regarded hosting site that required uploads to be WebAssembly. Or maybe some popular app that required plugins to be written in WebAssembly.
hbcondo714 3y ago
There is a package that "contains a WordPress website that can be run as a WCGI program by Wasmer"[1]. But there is now WordPress Playground: A WordPress that runs entirely in the browser[2]. I wonder if Wasmer will continue to develop their own WordPress browser implementation? [1] https://wasmer.io/wasmer/wcgi-wordpress-demo https://wasmer.io/wasmer/wcgi-wordpress-demo [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36726593 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36726593
- tyingq 3y ago
  >I wonder if Wasmer will continue to develop their own WordPress browser implementation? I think it's probably meant more as a demonstration of "run, publish and deploy any code, anywhere" rather than as a serious use case suggestion. It's taking something people are familiar with, know to be a bit messy and complicated and running it in a browser.
ghayes 3y ago
Maybe a good place to ask this question: I recently wanted to share lib code between three separate codebases (JavaScript, Swift and Kotlin). I considered writing it in a wasm-compatible language and sharing it as a wasn module. Curious if wasmer may cover these use-cases, since a) it’s cool to share code, but b) building high-quality native wrappers is hard (e.g. to wrap complex data types when different languages may have preferred styles).
- idorosen 3y ago
  All three languages have C FFI support of some kind. You could write it in C or C++ with some generated (or manual) wrappers/shims.
- jillesvangurp 3y ago
  Your best bet for this right now would be kotlin multiplatform, which can target IOS native, browsers, and of course android. It also has an experimental wasm compiler but it's not ready for production usage. But you could actually target wasm with it. Embedding WASM on IOS might be problematic because of Apple's rules regarding what is and isn't acceptable there. They've never liked people embedding interpreters in their apps. That's how they blocked flash as well. And that's how they continue to block the firefox and chrome browser engines.
  - DanielHB 3y ago
    Technically you could run the wasm code in a web view, but that would make all calls have overhead in the milliseconds range
    - jamil7 3y ago
      There’s a wasm interpreter you can use on iOS. https://github.com/wasm3/wasm3 https://github.com/wasm3/wasm3
- jamil7 3y ago
  Rust and UniFFI would cover the native side, although async/futures support is immature currently. You could then also potentially compile to wasm but I haven’t tried that.
janpio 3y ago
How does this compare to Fermyon’s Spin [1] and Cloud [2]? 1: https://www.fermyon.com/spin https://www.fermyon.com/spin 2: https://www.fermyon.com/cloud https://www.fermyon.com/cloud
0x073 3y ago
"Get started" links to discord? This get more and more common, but no thanks.
- ImHereToVote 3y ago
  Can some into discord explain why it's good for documentation? It seems like a dumpster fire to me.
- syrusakbary 3y ago
  That's a bug. The proper link should be pointing to the Wasmer runtime docs. Thanks for pointing this out!
kitd 3y ago
From the Go runtime docs here https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/wasmerio/wasmer-go/wasmer https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/wasmerio/wasmer-go/wasmer > By extension, a headless engine can only execute a WebAssembly module, i.e. a module that has previously been compiled, or compiled, serialized and deserialized. This offers the potential of using WASM w/ go (or any other language I expect) to create the equivalent of Erlang's "Universal Server". Ie. create an API that receives the code necessary to "become" another API.
Kolja 3y ago
I have no personal experience with Wasmer or the people behind it. But with the things I read about them (e. g. https://mnt.io/2021/10/04/i-leave-wasmer/ https://mnt.io/2021/10/04/i-leave-wasmer/ crossed my path again a few days ago) would make me, to put it lightly, hesitate before building on it.
- rurban 3y ago
  This CEO in question also appeared yesterday here and was blocked from ziglang. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37541994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37541994
  - syrusakbary 3y ago
    Thanks for providing the link, readers can probably judge for themselves by checking the comments there if blocking someone just for having a different point of view was the right thing to do by the Zig leadership team Context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37545192 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37545192
    - yoshuaw 3y ago
      > […] just for having a different point of view was the right thing to do by the Zig leadership team From reading these threads it’s less about the opinions you hold and more about how you behaved, no? Zig leadership asked you to not place bug bounties on issues without their consent. You decided to ignore their request and kept the bounty up by moving it to your own repo. Zig leadership decided you weren’t engaging in a particularly constructive way and decided you were unwelcome.
      - syrusakbary 3y ago
        Is not a bug bounty and the bounty was placed for a feature we needed at Wasmer, it was not required to be merged upstream in Zig so of course we kept the sponsorship for the work up
quic5 3y ago
I attempted to delete my Wasmer account a week ago. The button just prompted me to send an email, so I did that, but didn't get response since. Any idea how to enforce GDPR here?
- kevsim 3y ago
  The typical way would be to report it to the data protection authority in the European country in which you reside. Then they'll decide whether to take any action.
- syrusakbary 3y ago
  Not sure how that slipped through the cracks, but I will handle it directly to make sure the account deletion is properly handled asap. If you can send me an email to syrus@wasmer.io with your Wasmer username that would be appreciated
jmorgan 3y ago
Could anyone speak to the core differences between Web Assembly (Wasm) and WebAssembly System Interface (WASI)? I noticed Go 1.21 supports WASI as a target, and given how new that is, I haven't seen many example projects that use it yet. Hoping it could make deploying to places like Cloudflare workers more feasible for Go projects now.
- WhiteNoiz3 3y ago
  Out of the box WASM programs cannot interact with anything outside of the WebAssembly sandbox. It can only call functions that the host (whatever is running your WASM) has declared.. WASI is a standard set of functions that you can call from your WASM program so that you can interact with the host machine's file system, network and other things. It is modelled after POSIX. It provides some standardization for WASM programs for doing these types of things and guarantees some basic level of support. Otherwise, each host WASM program could implement them differently and WASM programs wouldn't really be portable.
  - jmorgan 3y ago
    Thanks! This is really helpful.
templix 3y ago
Wasmer rubs me the wrong way for some reason Staying clear
Alifatisk 3y ago
Cool, so Wasmer could in theory allow me to run functions from Rust in Ruby via a wasm module?
- CyberDildonics 3y ago
  Can't you already do that by writing a shared library?
  - Alifatisk 3y ago
    Through FFI? Yeah.
    - meepmorp 3y ago
      The calls to WASM would also be through FFI, right? Because it's not part of the actual ruby runtime.
      - Alifatisk 3y ago
        Looks like it's done through shared library https://github.com/wasmerio/wasmer-ruby/blob/master/lib/wasmer.rb https://github.com/wasmerio/wasmer-ruby/blob/master/lib/wasm...

121 points by gorenb 3y ago

Previous discussions: Wasmer 1.0 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25649476 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25649476 (161 comments) Wasmer 2.0 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27537541 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27537541 (56 comments) Wasmer 3.0 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33721685 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33721685 (183 comments)

houseatrielah 3y ago
Wasmer 3.0 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33721685 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33721685
- mitchbob 3y ago
  Thanks! Fixed.

fragmede 3y ago

I'm probably holding it wrong, but the website has a dropdown for CLI, but CLI is the only option in that dropdown, which is at odds with "Run... anywhere" in the headline.

CharlesW 3y ago
That widget is wonky for me too, but if you go to the runtime page (https://wasmer.io/products/runtime https://wasmer.io/products/runtime) you'll see SDKs for Rust, Python, JavaScript, Go, Ruby, and C.
- fragmede 3y ago
  That's the languages. I'm expecting/hoping to be able to run it in the CLI, web browser, native GUI, mobile, and on an ESP32.
  - CharlesW 3y ago
    It’s a developer “product”, so you can package it however you like.
syrusakbary 3y ago
You are completely right... we need to improve that! We are planning to add more languages there once the SDKs are fully ready... stay tuned :)

debarshri 3y ago

It feels very close to docker equivalent for WASM binaries which is very cool. I think this might be the breakthrough required to make wasm server-side very mainstream. I think there is still complexity and standardization issues on compilation side. When that is solved then server-side wasm would be ready for democratization I think.

skybrian 3y ago
The technology is interesting, but I've never bothered to install it. It seems like this ecosystem is missing compelling reasons to use it, sort of like a device or app store that's missing interesting apps. The demo they put on the front page doesn't really sell it. I already have Python installed. It's need that they got it running, but how is this better? What would sell it? Suppose there were a well-regarded hosting site that required uploads to be WebAssembly. Or maybe some popular app that required plugins to be written in WebAssembly.

hbcondo714 3y ago

There is a package that "contains a WordPress website that can be run as a WCGI program by Wasmer"[1]. But there is now WordPress Playground: A WordPress that runs entirely in the browser[2]. I wonder if Wasmer will continue to develop their own WordPress browser implementation? [1] https://wasmer.io/wasmer/wcgi-wordpress-demo https://wasmer.io/wasmer/wcgi-wordpress-demo [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36726593 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36726593

tyingq 3y ago
>I wonder if Wasmer will continue to develop their own WordPress browser implementation? I think it's probably meant more as a demonstration of "run, publish and deploy any code, anywhere" rather than as a serious use case suggestion. It's taking something people are familiar with, know to be a bit messy and complicated and running it in a browser.

ghayes 3y ago

Maybe a good place to ask this question: I recently wanted to share lib code between three separate codebases (JavaScript, Swift and Kotlin). I considered writing it in a wasm-compatible language and sharing it as a wasn module. Curious if wasmer may cover these use-cases, since a) it’s cool to share code, but b) building high-quality native wrappers is hard (e.g. to wrap complex data types when different languages may have preferred styles).

idorosen 3y ago
All three languages have C FFI support of some kind. You could write it in C or C++ with some generated (or manual) wrappers/shims.
jillesvangurp 3y ago
Your best bet for this right now would be kotlin multiplatform, which can target IOS native, browsers, and of course android. It also has an experimental wasm compiler but it's not ready for production usage. But you could actually target wasm with it. Embedding WASM on IOS might be problematic because of Apple's rules regarding what is and isn't acceptable there. They've never liked people embedding interpreters in their apps. That's how they blocked flash as well. And that's how they continue to block the firefox and chrome browser engines.
- DanielHB 3y ago
  Technically you could run the wasm code in a web view, but that would make all calls have overhead in the milliseconds range
  - jamil7 3y ago
    There’s a wasm interpreter you can use on iOS. https://github.com/wasm3/wasm3 https://github.com/wasm3/wasm3
jamil7 3y ago
Rust and UniFFI would cover the native side, although async/futures support is immature currently. You could then also potentially compile to wasm but I haven’t tried that.

janpio 3y ago

How does this compare to Fermyon’s Spin [1] and Cloud [2]? 1: https://www.fermyon.com/spin https://www.fermyon.com/spin 2: https://www.fermyon.com/cloud https://www.fermyon.com/cloud

0x073 3y ago

"Get started" links to discord? This get more and more common, but no thanks.

ImHereToVote 3y ago
Can some into discord explain why it's good for documentation? It seems like a dumpster fire to me.
syrusakbary 3y ago
That's a bug. The proper link should be pointing to the Wasmer runtime docs. Thanks for pointing this out!

kitd 3y ago

From the Go runtime docs here https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/wasmerio/wasmer-go/wasmer https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/wasmerio/wasmer-go/wasmer > By extension, a headless engine can only execute a WebAssembly module, i.e. a module that has previously been compiled, or compiled, serialized and deserialized. This offers the potential of using WASM w/ go (or any other language I expect) to create the equivalent of Erlang's "Universal Server". Ie. create an API that receives the code necessary to "become" another API.

Kolja 3y ago

I have no personal experience with Wasmer or the people behind it. But with the things I read about them (e. g. https://mnt.io/2021/10/04/i-leave-wasmer/ https://mnt.io/2021/10/04/i-leave-wasmer/ crossed my path again a few days ago) would make me, to put it lightly, hesitate before building on it.

rurban 3y ago
This CEO in question also appeared yesterday here and was blocked from ziglang. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37541994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37541994
- syrusakbary 3y ago
  Thanks for providing the link, readers can probably judge for themselves by checking the comments there if blocking someone just for having a different point of view was the right thing to do by the Zig leadership team Context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37545192 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37545192
  - yoshuaw 3y ago
    > […] just for having a different point of view was the right thing to do by the Zig leadership team From reading these threads it’s less about the opinions you hold and more about how you behaved, no? Zig leadership asked you to not place bug bounties on issues without their consent. You decided to ignore their request and kept the bounty up by moving it to your own repo. Zig leadership decided you weren’t engaging in a particularly constructive way and decided you were unwelcome.
    - syrusakbary 3y ago
      Is not a bug bounty and the bounty was placed for a feature we needed at Wasmer, it was not required to be merged upstream in Zig so of course we kept the sponsorship for the work up

quic5 3y ago

I attempted to delete my Wasmer account a week ago. The button just prompted me to send an email, so I did that, but didn't get response since. Any idea how to enforce GDPR here?

kevsim 3y ago
The typical way would be to report it to the data protection authority in the European country in which you reside. Then they'll decide whether to take any action.
syrusakbary 3y ago
Not sure how that slipped through the cracks, but I will handle it directly to make sure the account deletion is properly handled asap. If you can send me an email to syrus@wasmer.io with your Wasmer username that would be appreciated

jmorgan 3y ago

Could anyone speak to the core differences between Web Assembly (Wasm) and WebAssembly System Interface (WASI)? I noticed Go 1.21 supports WASI as a target, and given how new that is, I haven't seen many example projects that use it yet. Hoping it could make deploying to places like Cloudflare workers more feasible for Go projects now.

WhiteNoiz3 3y ago
Out of the box WASM programs cannot interact with anything outside of the WebAssembly sandbox. It can only call functions that the host (whatever is running your WASM) has declared.. WASI is a standard set of functions that you can call from your WASM program so that you can interact with the host machine's file system, network and other things. It is modelled after POSIX. It provides some standardization for WASM programs for doing these types of things and guarantees some basic level of support. Otherwise, each host WASM program could implement them differently and WASM programs wouldn't really be portable.
- jmorgan 3y ago
  Thanks! This is really helpful.

templix 3y ago

Wasmer rubs me the wrong way for some reason Staying clear

Alifatisk 3y ago

Cool, so Wasmer could in theory allow me to run functions from Rust in Ruby via a wasm module?

CyberDildonics 3y ago
Can't you already do that by writing a shared library?
- Alifatisk 3y ago
  Through FFI? Yeah.
  - meepmorp 3y ago
    The calls to WASM would also be through FFI, right? Because it's not part of the actual ruby runtime.
    - Alifatisk 3y ago
      Looks like it's done through shared library https://github.com/wasmerio/wasmer-ruby/blob/master/lib/wasmer.rb https://github.com/wasmerio/wasmer-ruby/blob/master/lib/wasm...