component-model VS interface-types

I don't think that's a very good goal. Jettisoning the DOM means jettisoning accessibility and being able to leverage everything that the browser gives you out-of-the-box. You have to render to a canvas and build everything from scratch. I think Wasm is great for supplementing a JS app, not replacing it (e.g. using a Wasm module to do some calculations in a Worker). I like to use the right tool for the job, and trying to use something other than JS to build a web app just seems a little janky to me.

At one point, there was a Host Bindings proposal that would enable you to do DOM manipulation (it looks like it was archived and moved to the Component Model spec [1]). That would probably be the ideal way to avoid as much JS as possible. However, browser vendors have been heavily optimizing their JS runtimes, and in some cases, Wasm may actually be slower than JS.

I've been following Wasm's progress for several years, which has been slow, but steady. Ironically, I think the web is actually the worst place to use it. There's so much cool non-web stuff being done with it and I'm more interested to see where that goes.

[1] https://github.com/WebAssembly/component-model?tab=readme-ov...

Well the great thing about WebAssembly is that you can port QT or anything else to be at a layer below -- thanks to WebAssembly Interface Types[0] and the Component Model specification that works underneath that.

To over-simplify, the Component Model manages language interop, and WIT constrains the boundaries with interfaces.

IMO the problem here is defining a 90% solution for most window, tab, button, etc management, then building embeddings in QT, Flutter/Skia, and other lower level engines. Getting a good cross-platform way of doing data passing, triggering re-renders, serializing window state is probably the meat of the interesting work.

On top of that, you really need great UX. This is normally where projects fall short -- why should I use this solution instead of something like Tauri[2] which is excellent or Electron?

[0]: https://github.com/WebAssembly/component-model/blob/main/des...

[1]: https://github.com/WebAssembly/component-model/blob/main/des...

[2]: https://tauri.app/

While I don't necessarily agree with the unnecessary, unsupported casual, & cheap contempt culture here ("unshackle the web from the mess that is JavaScript", "places that don't really need these problems to be solved")...

WebAssembly component-model is being developed to allow referring to and passing complex objects between different modules and the outside world, by establishing WebAssembly Interface Types (WIT). It's basically a ABI layer for wasm. This is a pre-requisite for host-object bridging, bringing in things like DOM elements.

Long running effort, but it's hard work and there's just not that many hands available for this deep work. Some assorted links with more: https://github.com/WebAssembly/component-model https://www.fermyon.com/blog/webassembly-component-model https://thenewstack.io/can-webassembly-get-its-act-together-...

It's just hard work, it's happening. And I think the advantages Andy talks to here illuminate very real reasons why this tech can be useful broadly. The ability to have plugins to a system that can be safely sandboxed is a huge win. That it's in any language allows much wider ecosystem of interests to participate, versus everyone interested in extending your work also having to be a java or c++ or rust developer.

A. Sure, but it isn't sufficiently beneficial for the cost.

B. WebAssembly is immature for developing a plugin system because of the lack of a sufficient ABI: https://github.com/WebAssembly/component-model

C. There aren't any other languages that meet the criteria. Lua was a no-go from the start. The maintainers did not like the language, and it necessitated adding more C code to Helix which could complicate building even further. https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/discussions/3806#discu...

AFAIK GC is irrelevant for "direct DOM access", you would rather want to hop into the following rabbit hole:

- reference types: https://github.com/WebAssembly/reference-types/blob/master/p...

- interface types (inactive): https://github.com/WebAssembly/interface-types/blob/main/pro...

- component model: https://github.com/WebAssembly/component-model

If this looks like a mess, that's because it is. Compared to that, the current solution to go through a Javascript shim doesn't look too bad IMHO.

The wasm idl (called WIT) is actively being worked on here: https://github.com/WebAssembly/component-model/blob/main/des...

Being able to access DOM is definitely an objective. It's just taking a lot longer than folks guessed to build a modular wasm ABI.

The WASM Component Model

https://github.com/WebAssembly/component-model

Take a look at the python abi to see what the structure looks like for calling into components https://github.com/WebAssembly/component-model/tree/main/design/mvp/canonical-abi

Some things that might greatly increase wasm usage and overall tooling:

1) Tools that run docker containers and serverless function services (like AWS lambda) to support providing a .wasm files instead

2) Garbage collection in the runtime to make GC languages easier to port to wasm

3) Dynamically typed languages (NodeJS, Python, Ruby) being able to compile to webassembly directly instead of porting the runtime to webassembly and then running the code through the runtime. This is a big ask though, basically needs to redesign the runtime completely

4) wasm-DOM bindings will enable other languages to do HTML rendering which will require new web frameworks for every language that wants to take over the space from JS. This will lead to (even more) fragmentation of the web ecosystem

5) A new wasm-first SDK (unrelated to the DOM) for building cross platform applications. I can see this taking off only if it is built-into the browsers and backed by some standards committee, so not very likely I think

6) Something like the Interface Types proposal ( https://github.com/WebAssembly/interface-types/blob/main/pro... ) becomes a thing allowing wasm programs to be consisted of modules written in several different languages and being able to call said modules with low or 0 runtime performance hit (and of course, no compilation to multiple CPU archs). So much of programming ecosystems are locked to specific languages (like data science with python) when there is little technical reason for it be like that.

AFAIK GC is irrelevant for "direct DOM access", you would rather want to hop into the following rabbit hole:

- reference types: https://github.com/WebAssembly/reference-types/blob/master/p...

- interface types (inactive): https://github.com/WebAssembly/interface-types/blob/main/pro...

- component model: https://github.com/WebAssembly/component-model

If this looks like a mess, that's because it is. Compared to that, the current solution to go through a Javascript shim doesn't look too bad IMHO.

I'm not really optimistic that particular aspect will get much improvement. Many people expected interface types to come save the day, but after a looong stagnation that proposal has been archived (for now) in favour of component types, which has much less potential for performance gains.

Really good questions. Unfortunately, most of the issues I found back then were fundamental ones. I've seen that Wasm has deprecated "Interface Types" and is now working on the "Component Model". But even then, as far as I understand that would only avoid the serialization and deserialization steps, and you would still need to copy complex types. It will be more performant, but I don't think it would be enough for Tremor either.

wasm doesn't know anything about the outside world on purpose. This allows it to be used in other domains. For direct access to the DOM et al, interface types are being developed. It's a non-trivial problem to interoperate with a dynamically typed GC'd language from any statically typed no-GC language that can compile to wasm.

You may want to look into WASM interface types, which is defining what amounts to am IDL for WASM and different languages have common calling conventions: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/08/webassembly-interface-type...

I don’t know if there’s a better intro article. I believe this is the current iteration of the proposal: https://github.com/WebAssembly/interface-types/blob/main/pro...

Yes, and if I'm not mistaken, this is the RFC

I see no reason why not. See the interface types proposal for a proposed solution.

Wanted to get thoughts from the Rust experts on this - the author of the Yew framework seems to think that Web Assembly Interface Types (https://github.com/WebAssembly/interface-types/blob/master/proposals/interface-types/Explainer.md) will allow Yew to eventually become faster than Vue, React, Angular, etc. Is there general consensus on this in the Rust community? The prospect of mixing Rust (for the performance critical pieces) with TS on the front end doesn't seem super appealing to me.