tree 0f9bd959bf437c8da2497433fd936d285f912e61
parent 481b42b50745d433c5bcfd90e7a03a4b9110a677
author Alex Crichton <alex@alexcrichton.com> 1508727660 -0700
committer Alex Crichton <alex@alexcrichton.com> 1511154461 -0800

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".

---

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 to get that working and will take some time. Relatively
simple programs all seem to work though!

---

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!