tree a06a749f8aa2acc3a5da14f87b2ed2c79635cfc9
parent 580298680ca6500c537662f38b4f56dab9c8c9aa
parent 80ff0f74b0c4a8d384160af81a1b21f53622d8af
author bors <bors@rust-lang.org> 1511166586 +0000
committer bors <bors@rust-lang.org> 1511166586 +0000

Auto merge of #45905 - alexcrichton:add-wasm-target, r=aturon

std: Add a new wasm32-unknown-unknown target

This commit adds a new target to the compiler: wasm32-unknown-unknown. This target is a reimagining of what it looks like to generate WebAssembly code from Rust. Instead of using Emscripten which can bring with it a weighty runtime this instead is a target which uses only the LLVM backend for WebAssembly and a "custom linker" for now which will hopefully one day be direct calls to lld.

Notable features of this target include:

* There is zero runtime footprint. The target assumes nothing exists other than the wasm32 instruction set.
* There is zero toolchain footprint beyond adding the target. No custom linker is needed, rustc contains everything.
* Very small wasm modules can be generated directly from Rust code using this target.
* Most of the standard library is stubbed out to return an error, but anything related to allocation works (aka `HashMap`, `Vec`, etc).
* Naturally, any `#[no_std]` crate should be 100% compatible with this new target.

This target is currently somewhat janky due to how linking works. The "linking" is currently unconditional whole program LTO (aka LLVM is being used as a linker). Naturally that means compiling programs is pretty slow! Eventually though this target should have a linker.

This target is also intended to be quite experimental. I'm hoping that this can act as a catalyst for further experimentation in Rust with WebAssembly. Breaking changes are very likely to land to this target, so it's not recommended to rely on it in any critical capacity yet. We'll let you know when it's "production ready".

### Building yourself

First you'll need to configure the build of LLVM and enable this target

```
$ ./configure --target=wasm32-unknown-unknown --set llvm.experimental-targets=WebAssembly
```

Next you'll want to remove any previously compiled LLVM as it needs to be rebuilt with WebAssembly support. You can do that with:

```
$ rm -rf build
```

And then you're good to go! A `./x.py build` should give you a rustc with the appropriate libstd target.

### Test support

Currently testing-wise this target is looking pretty good but isn't complete. I've got almost the entire `run-pass` test suite working with this target (lots of tests ignored, but many passing as well). The `core` test suite is [still getting LLVM bugs fixed](https://reviews.llvm.org/D39866) to get that working and will take some time. Relatively simple programs all seem to work though!

In general I've only tested this with a local fork that makes use of LLVM 5 rather than our current LLVM 4 on master. The LLVM 4 WebAssembly backend AFAIK isn't broken per se but is likely missing bug fixes available on LLVM 5. I'm hoping though that we can decouple the LLVM 5 upgrade and adding this wasm target!

### But the modules generated are huge!

It's worth nothing that you may not immediately see the "smallest possible wasm module" for the input you feed to rustc. For various reasons it's very difficult to get rid of the final "bloat" in vanilla rustc (again, a real linker should fix all this). For now what you'll have to do is:

    cargo install --git https://github.com/alexcrichton/wasm-gc
    wasm-gc foo.wasm bar.wasm

And then `bar.wasm` should be the smallest we can get it!

---

In any case for now I'd love feedback on this, particularly on the various integration points if you've got better ideas of how to approach them!