webcontainer-core VS biwascheme

How does it work? There is no backend whatsoever. The API Security Academy leverages WebContainers, a new technology that allows running full-blown node instances directly in the browser. Each WebContainer contains a live GraphQL application, so you'll not only understand why a vulnerability is risky, but also how to exploit it and, most importantly, how to fix it.

StackBlitz made the claim "... run Node.js, entirely inside your browser" #658, then had to revise it's claim to "We currently do not expose a way to use WebContainer outside of StackBlitz.com,".

> Wasm though seems like the likely general heir, and will have many different offerings for how to do that (Deno being one!).

I was recently blown away by some ideas that StackBlitz [0] apply based on WebContainers. The idea of a "server in the browser", they allow you to run Node-based environment like that via Wasm.

[0] https://stackblitz.com/

[1] https://webcontainers.io/

See https://webcontainers.io.

This very simple fact is well known flaw, which was already often criticized and asked for solutions by users. It doesn't only affect this kind of very exotic bootstrap applications but also significantly limits rusts usefulness in many other areas. Pure browser based scientific code documentation and example notebooks (e.g. jupyterLite) and sandboxed CI and IDE solutions (e.g. web containers) as available for many other languages are simply not available for rust because of this very fundamental issue.

Looks like they plan to open it. From the FAQ section of README (https://github.com/stackblitz/webcontainer-core#faqs):

> Is there a developer API?

I'm skeptical about stackblitz claims. The last time I checked that is closed source code https://github.com/stackblitz/webcontainer-core/issues/658.

StackBlitz claimed https://blog.stackblitz.com/posts/introducing-webcontainers/ to have implemented Node.js in the browser, though I have not observed any evidence of that being true and correct https://github.com/stackblitz/webcontainer-core/issues/658.

The other honorable mention is StackBlitz, a web-based web editor for making containers that run Javascript applications. Interestingly, StackBlitz is championing WebContainers, a technology that allows developers to start NodeJS servers within the browser. The downside is, this technology only works with Javascript-based projects (NodeJS, NextJS, etc). I include it here because WebContainers could easily be extended to support other languages via WASM, like Ruby. I’ll also add in Buildah, a tool for building OCI images. I won’t say much about this tool because it’s designed for building images; you still need another service, like Podman, to actually create the containers.

If Scheme is something you enjoy, BiwaScheme's interpreter can be instantiated from within Javascript and can be used to evaluate Scheme code.

https://www.biwascheme.org/

This project is very exciting. In the meantime, there are a couple of options:

BiwaScheme: https://www.biwascheme.org/

Advantages: written in JavaScript, with excellent JS interop. Project has some history.

Disadvantages: slower than S7 (though still plenty fast for many uses), less-complete (e.g., no syntax-rules or syntax-case, though it does have its own define-macro).

S7 Scheme: https://cm-gitlab.stanford.edu/bil/s7

Written in C, but can be transpiled to WASM (see https://github.com/actonDev/s7-playground/ )

Advantages: This project also has some history. Considerably faster than BiwaScheme.

Disadvantages: JS interop is clumsier (basically the same issues as JS interop with any WASM code... this could probably be mitigated considerably if someone wanted to take the time).

For Scheme implementations there are LIPS and biwascheme. I haven't done more than play around with them, so I can't really give an informed opinion about pros and cons or favorites.

I used to have hundreds of open tabs. From there I kept repurposing it to do more stuff with the browser until it reached its current state, where I want to make it a "extend firefox from Emacs" thing. It kinda do that already, but extending the firefox-extension itself require the extension to be re-built (so you need whole javascript tooling, rebuild and reload the addon etc). I am considering adding something like biwascheme to it soon to work around that.

And then users can just use biwascheme and run programs in mainframes and their smart toasters

Languages like Biwa Scheme and LIPS Scheme are good for running Scheme in the browser. But I would prefer compiling Scheme code to JavaScript in the server, then serving the compiled JavaScript image to the browser.

Just a note that even BiwaScheme doesn't fully implement call/cc, it doesn't save the whole environment when capturing.

Very cool! Do you know how this compares with Biwascheme? https://www.biwascheme.org/

Biwascheme has some weird scoping bugs that makes me a litte afraid of using it for serious stuff. It seems nixe and all, but this: https://github.com/biwascheme/biwascheme/issues/125 is not very confidemce inspiring.

There is another schemey language that compiles to JS that accepts things like this:

    (when (start-are-aligned?)