wasix-libc VS sokol-tools

But how do you know where to import these functions? Idk bro, I just grepped the wasix-libc till I found something that looked right.

Very few things are impossible on tech land.

I'd like to invite you to https://wasmer.sh/, where you'll see bash compiled to Wasm and working fully on the browser, using fork under the hood.

Also, this example might be enlightening: https://github.com/wasix-org/wasix-libc/blob/main/examples/f... (feel free to chime into the examples folder, where you may see other previously-thought-impossible accomplishments, such as longjmp and setjmp working fully on the browser).

Yeah, their outdated crap and don't work on Windows, better use a build tool from the current century ;)

Proper build tooling still doesn't change the fact that you need to stamp out one binary per OS and CPU architecture, potentially using different compilers. This is always brittle (I would know: https://github.com/floooh/sokol-tools/actions/runs/107248810...)

I would really love being able to take any POSIX command line tool, compile that to WASI, and run it on (at least) Linux, Windows and macOS like a regular executable without having to install a separate WASI runtime.

I'm a 'WASI convert' since I was able to take an ancient 8-bit assembler written in the mid-90's (http://xi6.com/projects/asmx/), compile that as-is with the WASI SDK (https://github.com/WebAssembly/wasi-sdk), and then integrate it into a VSCode extension (https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=floooh.v...).

A similar problem is I have is a shader cross-compiler (https://github.com/floooh/sokol-tools) which needs to run Linux, macOS and Windows and takes too long to build locally, thus I currently need to distribute that as pre-built binaries. Compiling this to WASI works, but the filesystem access restrictions built into current wasm runtimes are a hassle to manage, and it would require a WASI runtime to be separately installed).

Sokol also provides a solution for shader cross-compilation (https://github.com/floooh/sokol-tools/blob/master/docs/sokol...), so you only need to write your shaders once no matter if you're targeting OpenGL, Metal, or DirectX.

There are other tools you could use out there with IGL, but Sokol's solution streamlines the whole process.

> but that is only for software written in C, it does not work with C++.

I have a pretty complex C++ command line tool which works just fine with MUSL (https://github.com/floooh/sokol-tools). What potential problems should I be aware of?

In practice it works very well though, I experimented replacing cmake with build.zig for a 'not-quite-trivial' C++ project, and tbh for cross-platform code that's a lot nicer wrestling with cmake and all the C/C++ compiler toolchain differences:

https://github.com/floooh/sokol-tools/blob/master/build.zig

Yes, here is an example:

https://github.com/floooh/sokol-tools/blob/master/build.zig

Compared to cmake, this means giving up IDE support like Xcode or Visual Studio though, it's really just a pure build system.