3 ms·

As the manager of the original Buck team, rules should not be starlark. They should be `wasm`.

by LegNeato 2y ago

esafak 2y ago
Why?
matthewbauer 2y ago
What? Isn't wasm just a bytecode? How could you write rules in wasm?
kridsdale1 2y ago
I don’t understand
kerbs 2y ago
Also dying for an explanation here
- bloppe 2y ago
  Wasm, specifically using the component model [1], is really good for plugin use-cases. - Polyglot; you can write plugins (in this case Bazel rules) in "any" language, and the component model is easily the best system ever created for cross-language interoperability. - Ecosystem; tooling is still generally immature, but you'd be surprised how much buy-in there is. Web apps are a huge incentive for language developers to support it, and Wasm now runs in a lot of places besides the browser too. Envoy and Istio support Wasm plugins. So does Postgres. So does neovim. - Component interfaces are richly typed. You get things like lists, structs, "resources" (aka objects with instance methods), etc. all supported idiomatically in whichever language you're using and these can be used across language boundaries. Even between GC and non-GC languages. Even with Rust's ownership model. - Plugins are fully sandboxed, so a host can allow plugins to have things like `while` loops while enforcing runtime limits on a per-instruction basis. It also means Bazel doesn't have to invent it's own bespoke sandboxing solutions for every supported platform, as it does today. And Wasm is designed to handle untrusted Web code, so there are tons of security guarantees. - Performance is already really good, and there's every reason to believe it will get better. Again, Browser support is big here. The things the Chrome team did to optimize V8 are pretty incredible, and they're now turning their attention to Wasm in a big way. [1]: https://component-model.bytecodealliance.org/design/why-component-model.html https://component-model.bytecodealliance.org/design/why-comp...
bloppe 2y ago
I'm super into the component model but honestly the tooling is still not ready. Basically only LLVM (and really just C) has good enough tooling. The rest of the wasm tool chains are still heavily focused on core modules and if they support components it's only `wasi:cli/run`

As the manager of the original Buck team, rules should not be starlark. They should be `wasm`.

esafak 2y ago

Why?

matthewbauer 2y ago

What? Isn't wasm just a bytecode? How could you write rules in wasm?

kridsdale1 2y ago

I don’t understand

kerbs 2y ago

Also dying for an explanation here

bloppe 2y ago
Wasm, specifically using the component model [1], is really good for plugin use-cases. - Polyglot; you can write plugins (in this case Bazel rules) in "any" language, and the component model is easily the best system ever created for cross-language interoperability. - Ecosystem; tooling is still generally immature, but you'd be surprised how much buy-in there is. Web apps are a huge incentive for language developers to support it, and Wasm now runs in a lot of places besides the browser too. Envoy and Istio support Wasm plugins. So does Postgres. So does neovim. - Component interfaces are richly typed. You get things like lists, structs, "resources" (aka objects with instance methods), etc. all supported idiomatically in whichever language you're using and these can be used across language boundaries. Even between GC and non-GC languages. Even with Rust's ownership model. - Plugins are fully sandboxed, so a host can allow plugins to have things like `while` loops while enforcing runtime limits on a per-instruction basis. It also means Bazel doesn't have to invent it's own bespoke sandboxing solutions for every supported platform, as it does today. And Wasm is designed to handle untrusted Web code, so there are tons of security guarantees. - Performance is already really good, and there's every reason to believe it will get better. Again, Browser support is big here. The things the Chrome team did to optimize V8 are pretty incredible, and they're now turning their attention to Wasm in a big way. [1]: https://component-model.bytecodealliance.org/design/why-component-model.html https://component-model.bytecodealliance.org/design/why-comp...

bloppe 2y ago

I'm super into the component model but honestly the tooling is still not ready. Basically only LLVM (and really just C) has good enough tooling. The rest of the wasm tool chains are still heavily focused on core modules and if they support components it's only `wasi:cli/run`