wasmtime VS wasm3

Compare wasmtime vs wasm3 and see what are their differences.

Our great sponsors
  • InfluxDB - Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale
  • WorkOS - The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS
  • SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews
wasmtime wasm3
171 39
14,224 6,934
2.7% 1.2%
10.0 7.1
6 days ago 28 days ago
Rust C
Apache License 2.0 MIT License
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

wasmtime

Posts with mentions or reviews of wasmtime. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-03-10.
  • Unlocking the Power of WebAssembly
    3 projects | dev.to | 10 Mar 2024
    WebAssembly is extremely portable. WebAssembly runs on: all major web browsers, V8 runtimes like Node.js, and independent Wasm runtimes like Wasmtime, Lucet, and Wasmer.
  • Howto: WASM runtimes in Docker / Colima
    5 projects | dev.to | 12 Jan 2024
    cpu: 4 disk: 60 memory: 12 arch: host hostname: colima autoActivate: true forwardAgent: false # I only tested this with 'docker', not 'containerd': runtime: docker kubernetes: enabled: false version: v1.24.3+k3s1 k3sArgs: [] network: address: true dns: [] dnsHosts: host.docker.internal: host.lima.internal # Added: # - containerd-snapshotter: true (meaning containerd will be used for pulling images) docker: features: buildkit: true containerd-snapshotter: true vmType: vz rosetta: true mountType: virtiofs mountInotify: false cpuType: host # This provisioning script installs build dependencies, WasmEdge and builds the WASM runtime shims for containerd. # NOTE: this takes a LOOONG time! provision: - mode: system script: | [ -f /etc/docker/daemon.json ] && echo "Already provisioned!" && exit 0 echo "Installing system updates:" apt-get update -y apt-get upgrade -y echo "Installing WasmEdge and runwasi build dependencies:" # NOTE: packages curl, git and python3 already installed: apt-get install -y make gcc build-essential pkgconf libtool libsystemd-dev libprotobuf-c-dev libcap-dev libseccomp-dev libyajl-dev libgcrypt20-dev go-md2man autoconf automake criu pkg-config libdbus-glib-1-dev libelf-dev libclang-dev libzstd-dev protobuf-compiler apt-get clean -y - mode: user script: | [ -f /etc/docker/daemon.json ] && echo "Already provisioned!" && exit 0 # # Setting vars for this script: # # Which WASM runtimes to install (wasmedge, wasmtime and wasmer are supported): WASM_RUNTIMES="wasmedge wasmtime wasmer" # # Location of the containerd config file: CONTAINERD_CONFIG="/etc/containerd/config.toml" # # Target location for the WASM runtimes and containerd shims ($TARGET/bin and $TARGET/lib): TARGET="/usr/local" # # Install rustup: # echo "Installing rustup for building runwasi:" curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh -s -- --default-toolchain none -y source "$HOME/.cargo/env" # # Install selected WASM runtimes and containerd shims: # [[ -z "${WASM_RUNTIMES// /}" ]] && echo "No WASM runtimes selected - exiting!" && exit 0 git clone https://github.com/containerd/runwasi echo "Installing WASM runtimes and building containerd shims: ${WASM_RUNTIMES}:" sudo mkdir -p /etc/containerd/ containerd config default | sudo tee $CONTAINERD_CONFIG >/dev/null for runtimeName in $WASM_RUNTIMES; do case $runtimeName in wasmedge) echo "Installing WasmEdge:" curl -sSfL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/WasmEdge/WasmEdge/master/utils/install.sh | sudo bash -s -- -p $TARGET echo echo "`wasmedge -v` installed!" ;; wasmtime) echo "Installing wasmtime:" curl -sSfL https://wasmtime.dev/install.sh | bash sudo cp .wasmtime/bin/* ${TARGET}/bin/ rm -rf .wasmtime echo "`wasmtime -V` installed!" ;; wasmer) echo "Installing wasmer:" curl -sSfL https://get.wasmer.io | sh sudo cp .wasmer/bin/* ${TARGET}/bin/ sudo cp .wasmer/lib/* ${TARGET}/lib/ rm -rf .wasmer echo "`wasmer -V` installed!" ;; *) echo "ERROR: WASM runtime $runtimeName is not supported!" exit 1 ;; esac cd runwasi echo "Building containerd-shim-${runtimeName}:" cargo build -p containerd-shim-${runtimeName} --release echo "Installing containerd-shim-${runtimeName}-v1:" sudo install ./target/release/containerd-shim-${runtimeName}-v1 ${TARGET}/bin sudo ln -sf ${TARGET}/bin/containerd-shim-${runtimeName}-v1 ${TARGET}/bin/containerd-shim-${runtimeName}d-v1 sudo ln -sf ${TARGET}/bin/containerd-shim-${runtimeName}-v1 ${TARGET}/bin/containerd-${runtimeName}d echo "containerd-shim-${runtimeName} installed." cd .. echo "[plugins.\"io.containerd.grpc.v1.cri\".containerd.runtimes.${runtimeName}]" | sudo tee -a $CONTAINERD_CONFIG >/dev/null echo " runtime_type = \"io.containerd.${runtimeName}.v1\"" | sudo tee -a $CONTAINERD_CONFIG >/dev/null done echo "containerd WASM runtimes and shims installed." # # Restart the systemctl services to pick up the installed shims. # NOTE: We need to 'stop' docker because at this point the actual daemon.json config is not yet provisioned: # echo "Restarting/reloading docker/containerd services:" sudo systemctl daemon-reload sudo systemctl restart containerd sudo systemctl stop docker sshConfig: true mounts: [] env: {}
  • MotorOS: a Rust-first operating system for x64 VMs
    7 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 7 Jan 2024
    When you say wasm container, you mean something like wasmtime that provides a non-browser wasm runtime?

    https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime

  • Prettier $20k Bounty was Claimed
    16 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 27 Nov 2023
    The roadmap I linked above. The WASI folks have done a poor job at communicating, no doubt, but I'm surprised someone like yourself literally building a competitor spec isn't following what they are doing closely.

    Just for you I did some googling: see here[0] for the current status of WASI threads overall, or here[1] and here[2] for what they are up to with WASI in general. In this PR[3] you can see they enabled threads (atomic instructions and shared memory, not thread creation) by default in wasmtime. And in this[4] repository you can see they are actively developing the thread creation API and have it as their #1 priority.

    If folks want to use WASIX as a quick and dirty hack to compile existing programs, then by all means, have at it! I can see that being a technical win. Just know that your WASIX program isn't going to run natively in wasmtime (arguably the best WASM runtime today), nor will it run in browsers, because they're not going to expose WASIX - they're going to go with the standards instead. so far you're the only person I've met that thinks exposing POSIX fork() to WASM is a good idea, seemingly because it just lets you build existing apps 'without modification'.

    Comical you accuse me of being polarizing, while pushing for your world with two competing WASI standards, two competing thread creation APIs, and a split WASM ecosystem overall.

    [0] https://github.com/bytecodealliance/jco/issues/247#issuecomm...

    [1] https://bytecodealliance.org/articles/wasmtime-and-cranelift...

    [2] https://bytecodealliance.org/articles/webassembly-the-update...

    [3] https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/pull/7285

    [4] https://github.com/WebAssembly/shared-everything-threads

  • Spin 2.0 – open-source tool for building and running WASM apps
    13 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 4 Nov 2023
    Thanks for the question!

    Spin could definitely run in more places than what we have pre-built binaries for. Specifically, we could run on all platforms Wasmtime supports today (https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/releases/tag/v1...), including RISC and S390X, for example.

    And while we have been experimenting a bit with running Spin on RISC, we haven't really had the bandwidth or requirement to build a production build for those yet.

    Are you interested in a specific operating system or CPU architecture? Would love to understand your scenario.

  • Dave Cutler: The Secret History of Microsoft Windows [video]
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 22 Oct 2023
    > I used to think we'd eventually get to capability based security, but now I see we'll always be stuck with application permission flags, the almost worthless bastard cousin, instead.

    My hope is that WASI will introduce capability based security to the mainstream on non-mobile computers [0] - it might just take some time for them to get it right. (And hopefully no half-baked status-quo-reinforcing regressive single—runtime-backed alternatives win in the meantime.)

    [0]: https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/blob/main/docs/...

  • Requiem for a Stringref
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 19 Oct 2023
    WasmTime finished finished the RFC for the implementation details in June: https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/issues/5032
  • Should You Be Scared of Unix Signals?
    8 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 16 Oct 2023
  • MongoDB’s New Query Engine
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 21 Sep 2023
    re LLVM: Yes, Cranelift was designed to address these issues

    https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/blob/main/crane...

  • Val, a high-level systems programming language
    10 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 18 Jul 2023
    No longer does Wasm/WASI need JS host! There are many spec-compliant runtimes built for environments from tiny embedded systems up to beefy arm/x86 racks:

    - https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasm-micro-runtime

    - https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime

    - https://github.com/wasmerio/wasmer

    - https://github.com/tetratelabs/wazero

    - https://github.com/extism/extism (disclaimer, my company's project - makes wasm easily embeddable into 16+ programming languages!)

wasm3

Posts with mentions or reviews of wasm3. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-01-08.
  • Show HN: Mutable.ai – Turn your codebase into a Wiki
    14 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 8 Jan 2024
    As long as this is happening, might as well try some of my favorites: https://github.com/wasm3/wasm3, https://github.com/WebAssembly/wabt, https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime
  • Wasm3 entering a minimal maintenance phase
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 18 Dec 2023
    This means that newly created wasm blobs will stop being able to run in wasm3.

    On a side note, I can't help feeling sorry for the people that advocate for C over C++ when I see commits like https://github.com/wasm3/wasm3/commit/121575febe8aa1b544fbcb...

    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 18 Dec 2023
  • DeviceScript: TypeScript for Tiny IoT Devices
    6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 24 May 2023
    It can, wasm3 is a wasm interpretor ported to a lot of bare metal microcontrollers: https://github.com/wasm3/wasm3
  • Towards a modern Web stack (by Ian Hickson, author of the HTML5 spec and current Flutter tech lead)
    2 projects | /r/rust | 5 Feb 2023
    On other benchmarks I'm seeing numbers closer to 20% slower, e.g. https://github.com/wasm3/wasm3/blob/main/docs/Performance.md and https://github.com/second-state/wasm32-wasi-benchmark. It's numerical code, which is the best case scenario for a native binary. It's much closer on an average web app or server workload, e.g. https://krausest.github.io/js-framework-benchmark/current.html - you can find WASM frameworks that beat most JS frameworks on there, but that is not as impressive considering the state of the JS ecosystem. Overall, it's already under 50%, and there is still plenty of room for improvement.
  • Show HN: I wrote a WebAssembly Interpreter and Toolkit in C
    6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 9 Jan 2023
    Can miniwasm share memory with the host? wasm3 doesn't allow this[1] and requires you to allocate VM memory and pass it to the host, but that has several downsides (some buffers come from external sources so this requires a memcpy; the VM memory location isn't stable so you can't store a pointer to it on the host; etc.).

    I'm really interested in a fast interpreter-only Wasm VM that can allow the host to share some of its memory with the VM.

    [1]: https://github.com/wasm3/wasm3/issues/114

  • The Pine Formula
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 3 Aug 2022
    > This product family will never run Linux, as developers will need to develop a new firmware from scratch. This is obviously not a problem for the earbuds, but a big limitation for the player

    Perhaps not Linux, but I suspect there would be a place here for a Unix-like platform that feels familiar. If for example we could get wide-adoption of something like the JVM or wasm3 [0] on these platforms, code could become quite portable, despite wildly different architectures.

    For example, Apache's NuttX [1] (that I first learned from Lupyuen, a guy making great progress working with Pine64 products).

    > Processing wise, this chip is well sufficient for TWS headphones, but very inadequate for an audio player. It will not drive a good screen, it nor run high-resolution flacs or (probably?) support a high-quality, high-bandwidth codec. In fact, a first generation iPod Nano (retailing for $149 in 2006) had 16MB RAM, so over 16 times what the PinePod would offer. In fact, even the features of any custom firmware are limited from so little memory

    I wouldn't call it time just yet. Displays can be interacted with intelligently (to reduce pixel bandwidth) and ultra high quality audio codecs offer diminishing returns, especially when you don't have a DAC or headphones to make the most of them.

    My advice to Pine64 would be this:

    1. Consolidate your product lines. The Pinebook is just a slower Pinebook Pro, just go with the Pinebook Pro. The PineTab is just a Pinebook without the keyboard, again I would consolidate this with the Pinebook Pro and just make the keyboard detachable.

    2. The SBCs should just go straight into the device, thus creating a clear upgrade path for future products. If you want a PineBook Pro running Quartz, just swap the boards (of course with daughter boards for USB expansion, display driver, power, etc).

    3. Don't be afraid to kill off products. The Pinebook and PineTab have never seen a new release. The PinePhone appears to be taking a back seat to the PinePhone Pro. The PineCube is basically DoA due to the processing power struggling to process the camera image.

    More generally, try to do fewer things, but do them well.

    [0] https://github.com/wasm3/wasm3

    [1] https://nuttx.apache.org/docs/latest/

    [2] https://lupyuen.github.io/articles/sensor

  • Take More Screenshots
    24 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 24 Jul 2022
    I think SIMD was a distraction to our conversation, most code doesn't use it and in the future the length agnostic, flexible vectors; https://github.com/WebAssembly/flexible-vectors/blob/master/... are a better solution. They are a lot like RVV; https://github.com/riscv/riscv-v-spec, research around vector processing is why RISC-V exists in the first place!

    I was trying to find the smallest Rust Wasm interpreters I could find, I should have read the source first, I only really use wasmtime, but this one looks very interesting, zero deps, zero unsafe.

    16.5kloc of Rust https://github.com/rhysd/wain

    The most complete wasm env for small devices is wasm3

    20kloc of C https://github.com/wasm3/wasm3

    I get what you are saying as to be so small that there isn't a place of bugs to hide.

    > “There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.” CAR Hoare

    Even a 100 line program can't be guaranteed to be free of bugs. These programs need embedded tests to ensure that the layer below them is functioning as intended. They cannot and should not run open loop. Speaking of 300+ reimplementations, I am sure that RISC-V has already exceeded that. The smallest readable implementation is like 200 lines of code; https://github.com/BrunoLevy/learn-fpga/blob/master/FemtoRV/...

    I don't think Wasm suffers from the base extension issue you bring up. It will get larger, but 1.0 has the right algebraic properties to be useful forever. Wasm does require an environment, for archival purposes that environment should be written in Wasm, with api for instantiating more envs passed into the first env. There are two solutions to the Wasm generating and calling Wasm problem. First would be a trampoline, where one returns Wasm from the first Wasm program which is then re-instantiated by the outer env. The other would be to pass in the api to create new Wasm envs over existing memory buffers.

    See, https://copy.sh/v86/

    MS-DOS, NES or C64 are useful for archival purposes because they are dead, frozen in time along with a large corpus of software. But there is a ton of complexity in implementing those systems with enough fidelity to run software.

    Lua, Typed Assembly; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typed_assembly_language and Sector Lisp; https://github.com/jart/sectorlisp seem to have the right minimalism and compactness for archival purposes. Maybe it is sectorlisp+rv32+wasm.

    If there are directions you would like Wasm to go, I really recommend attending the Wasm CG meetings.

    https://github.com/WebAssembly/meetings

    When it comes to an archival system, I'd like it to be able to run anything from an era, not just specially crafted binaries. I think Wasm meets that goal.

    https://gist.github.com/dabeaz/7d8838b54dba5006c58a40fc28da9...

  • `wasm32-wasi` support added to Tokio
    16 projects | /r/rust | 18 Jul 2022
    It allows WebAssembly to be programs which are run using a runtime on the command line, like Wasmtime, Wasmer, Wasm3, etc. Sometimes, you want to have a program which acts like a server, in that it can receive connections and send responses. This is what the patch for Tokio does.
  • There’s a cunning workaround for this challenge; rather than compiling JS to Wasm, you can instead compile a JavaScript engine to WebAssembly then use that to execute your code.
    3 projects | /r/programmingcirclejerk | 20 Jun 2022
    it's been done

What are some alternatives?

When comparing wasmtime and wasm3 you can also consider the following projects:

wasmer - 🚀 The leading Wasm Runtime supporting WASIX, WASI and Emscripten

SSVM - WasmEdge is a lightweight, high-performance, and extensible WebAssembly runtime for cloud native, edge, and decentralized applications. It powers serverless apps, embedded functions, microservices, smart contracts, and IoT devices.

wasm-micro-runtime - WebAssembly Micro Runtime (WAMR)

quickjs-emscripten - Safely execute untrusted Javascript in your Javascript, and execute synchronous code that uses async functions

wasm-bindgen - Facilitating high-level interactions between Wasm modules and JavaScript

wasm-pack - 📦✨ your favorite rust -> wasm workflow tool!

wazero - wazero: the zero dependency WebAssembly runtime for Go developers

godot-wasm-engine

esp32-snippets - Sample ESP32 snippets and code fragments

trunk - Build, bundle & ship your Rust WASM application to the web.

mold - Mold: A Modern Linker đź¦