exception-handling VS Dokku

Interesting article, thanks!

Notes on the issues mentioned there:

* The need for a manual shadow stack: This is fixed in WasmGC (in the same way it works in JS, as the link mentions).

* Lack of try-catch: This is fixed by the Wasm exception handling proposal, which has already shipped in browsers, https://github.com/WebAssembly/exception-handling/blob/main/...

* Null checks: Mostly fixed by WasmGC. The spec defines non-nullable local types, and VMs can use the techniques the article mentions to optimize them using signals (Wizard does, for example).

* Class initialization: This is a difficult problem, as the article says. J2Wasm and Binaryen are working to optimize it through static analysis at the toolchain level. Here is a recent PR I wrote that makes progress there: https://github.com/WebAssembly/binaryen/pull/6061

* The vtable overhead issue the article mentions may be a problem. I'm not aware of good measurements on it, through. There are some ideas on post-MVP solutions for method dispatch that might help, but nothing concrete yet.

* Checks for null and trapping: There has been discussion of variants on the GC instructions that throw instead of trap. Measurements, however, have not shown it to be a big problem atm, so it is low priority.

The author is right that stack walking, signals, and memory control are important areas that could help here.

Overall with WasmGC and exceptions we are in a pretty good place for Java as emitted by J2Wasm today: it is usually faster than J2CL which compiles Java to JavaScript. But there is definitely room for improvement.

It uses https://github.com/WebAssembly/exception-handling/blob/master/proposals/exception-handling/Exceptions.md which is actually supported by all major browsers already.

Yep, you're right. It's also more than just the DOM, it's web APIs in general, such as fetch, audio, webgl/webgpu, etc. WASM still needs GC, exceptions, and WASI to be able to fully interop with any host without any of the current limitations. This'll take a few years. I'm looking forward to the future in which I will be shipping WASM-only web apps to my users.

Its a part of the wasm plan to support gc https://github.com/WebAssembly/gc exceptions https://github.com/WebAssembly/exception-handling

As of Node.js 17, the v8 JavaScript engine has been updated to v9.5. The changes in this release are primarily aimed at expanding internationalization for dates and calendars as well as for the output of time zones. It also implements the WebAssembly Exception Handling proposal, designed to reduce overhead compared to current JavaScript-based workarounds.

Agreed, although at some point in a not very far feature most of those missing features will resolved. So in my mind is just a matter of time. The Wasm Community group is doing an awesome work on that :)

Here are a few examples of what needs move forward in Wasm:

* [1] Wasm Exceptions Handling: Right now Wasm is missing a way to handle exceptions natively (C++ programs can only compile to Wasm using the asyncify or longjmp/setjmp tricks via Js try/catch)

* [2] Wasm GC: Wasm Binary files are quite big (specially in interpreted languages). This is partially caused by the GC being included in the Binary itself. The GC proposal will solve this while also providing faster execution.

* [3] Wasm 64-bit Memory: currently Wasm can only operate with 32-bit data. In some contexts you may want you operate with more than 4GB of memory (for example, when operating over terabytes of data). The 64-bit memory proposal will solve that.

[1]: https://github.com/WebAssembly/exception-handling

Would be great to see a comparison to some better known alternatives like

- Dokku [0]

- CapRover [1]

[0] https://dokku.com/

[1] https://caprover.com/

If you want to dig into it anyways, Dokku is an interesting mention. They provide an Open Source PaaS that you can install on your server to simplify self hosting containers.

When I came across Coolify, I thought of giving it a try. I am aware of Dokku, but I never really tried it because it doesn't have a UI. I work primarily as a UI developer, so having a nice UI to work with is a plus for me.

I run all my projects on Dokku. It’s a sweet spot for me between a barebones VPS with Docker Compose and something a lot more complicated like k8s. Dokku comes with a bunch of solid plugins for databases that handle backups and such. Zero downtime deploys, TLS cert management, reverse proxies, all out of the box. It’s simple enough to understand in a weekend and has been quietly maintained for many years. The only downside is it’s meant mostly for single server deployments, but I’ve never needed another server so far.

https://dokku.com/

Yeah there are a bunch of selfhostable things:

Caprover (https://caprover.com/)

Dokku (https://github.com/dokku/dokku)

But people still choose Netlify and Vercel for ease of use I think.

Maybe we need something that's just Netlify. The closest I've seen to the "right" UX is Ness:

https://ness.sh

The modern iteration of these tools has taken the developer experience learnings from the Platform as a Service (PaaS) category, and will bring them to your own VM, giving you your own personal PaaS. Example of this include Dokku, Coolify, Caprover, Cloud66 and many more!

Based on the fact that your ideal is to have a similar experience to heroku than managing your own server setting up reverse proxies take a look at these options:

1) https://dokku.com - lets you turn your light sail instance basically into heroku

2) https://render.com

3) https://fly.io

4) If you have aws credits this is their heroku equivalent: https://aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk

above is not what I do but would be the options I would pursue if I understand your preference and requirement correctly.

All in all, I really recommend trying out Dokku if you are a developer interested in hosting your own projects. It makes it super easy to get everything you need to get up and running without having to worry about the specifics. And the price is impossible to beat!

The installation instructions are on the frontpage of our site. Thats basically all you need to do to install Dokku. As far as using it, we have a simplified tutorial here.