Skip to content

Commit 6bbeff9

Browse files
MaxDesiatovkateinoigakukun
MaxDesiatov
and
kateinoigakukun
authored
December issue of "What's new in SwiftWasm" (#8)
* December issue of "What's new in SwiftWasm" * Update Content/posts/update-05-december-2020.md * Update Content/posts/update-05-december-2020.md * Clean up and expand some of the sections * Finished draft Co-authored-by: Yuta Saito <kateinoigakukun@gmail.com>
1 parent 75a129c commit 6bbeff9

File tree

1 file changed

+190
-0
lines changed

1 file changed

+190
-0
lines changed

‎Content/posts/update-05-december-2020.md‎

Lines changed: 190 additions & 0 deletions
Original file line numberDiff line numberDiff line change
@@ -0,0 +1,190 @@
1+
---
2+
date: 2021-12-11 14:34
3+
description: An update on what happened in the SwiftWasm ecosystem during December 2020.
4+
---
5+
# What's new in SwiftWasm #5
6+
7+
Happy New Year everyone! Here's a digest of what happened with [SwiftWasm](https://swiftwasm.org) in
8+
December of 2020, published with a slight delay (it's 2021 already after all 😅).
9+
10+
## SwiftWasm community
11+
12+
One thing we forgot to mention in our November update is that the SwiftWasm community now has
13+
[its own Discord server](https://discord.gg/ashJW8T8yp). In case you prefer Slack to Discord, we
14+
recommend you to join the `#webassembly` channel in [the SwiftPM Slack
15+
workspace](https://swift-package-manager.herokuapp.com/).
16+
17+
In December we saw a lot of projects built with SwiftWasm shared by the community. Here a few most
18+
noteworthy:
19+
20+
* [An online Multi-Player Meme Party Game written in Swift](https://github.com/nerdsupremacist/memes),
21+
using [Vapor](https://vapor.codes/) for backend and SwiftWasm with
22+
[Tokamak](https://tokamak.dev) for frontend, built by [Mathias Quintero](https://github.com/nerdsupremacist).
23+
* [Tic-tac-toe game](https://garrepi.dev/tic-tac-toe/) [built with SwiftWasm](https://github.com/johngarrett/tic-tac-toe) by [John Garrett](https://github.com/johngarrett).
24+
* [WebAssembly example with React and SwiftWasm](https://expressflow.com/blog/posts/webassembly-example-with-react-and-swiftwasm) by
25+
[Martin Vasko](https://github.com/martinvasko).
26+
27+
## Documentation
28+
29+
### SwiftWasm book
30+
31+
We're working on tracking down all the possible edge cases when porting code from other
32+
platforms in [the SwiftWasm book](https://book.swiftwasm.org/). Previously we were asked how to port
33+
code that depends on the `Darwin` module on Apple platforms or `Glibc` on Linux. We recommend
34+
using the `WASILibc` module, which obviously somewhat differs from libc on other platforms. We've
35+
added [a corresponding note clarifying this](https://book.swiftwasm.org/getting-started/libc.html)
36+
to the book.
37+
38+
## Toolchain
39+
40+
As the Swift team already announced [the release process for the 5.4
41+
version](https://forums.swift.org/t/swift-5-4-release-process/41936), we started preparing our
42+
corresponding SwiftWasm 5.4 release. The [`swiftwasm-release/5.4`](https://github.com/swiftwasm/swift/tree/swiftwasm-release/5.4)
43+
branch in our fork now [tracks the upstream `release/5.4`
44+
branch](https://github.com/swiftwasm/swift/pull/2380), as we plan to tag our own 5.4.0 later
45+
this year.
46+
47+
Additionally, we made sure that the fork of our toolchain
48+
[can be compiled on Apple Silicon Macs](https://github.com/swiftwasm/swift/pull/2405). While GitHub
49+
Actions doesn't provide CI agents for the M1 architecture, the SwiftWasm toolchain can be built
50+
locally for Apple Silicon, and we hope to provide a prebuilt distribution archive for it in some
51+
future release.
52+
53+
### Experimental async/await support
54+
55+
[@kateinoigakukun](https://github.com/kateinoigakukun) enabled [experimental concurrency support
56+
in SwiftWasm](https://github.com/swiftwasm/swift/pull/2408) and fixed several issues that
57+
previously prevented us from enabling `async`/`await` in development snapshots. Currently, starting with
58+
[swift-wasm-DEVELOPMENT-SNAPSHOT-2021-01-02-a](https://github.com/swiftwasm/swift/releases/tag/swift-wasm-DEVELOPMENT-SNAPSHOT-2021-01-02-a),
59+
the toolchain only supports a single-threaded task executor. This executor is suitable for usage in
60+
standalone WASI hosts such as Wasmer or Wasmtime. Unfortunately, it blocks the JavaScript event loop
61+
until all jobs are completed, and is unable to run any jobs created after the first event loop
62+
cycle. While this makes it unsuitable for JavaScript environments, we were able to work around that
63+
in JavaScriptKit as discussed in the next section.
64+
65+
## Libraries
66+
67+
### JavaScriptKit
68+
69+
[@kateinoigakukun](https://github.com/kateinoigakukun) started implementing [a Swift concurrency
70+
task executor](https://github.com/swiftwasm/JavaScriptKit/pull/112) integrated with the JavaScript
71+
event loop. There are still several issues, but it's working well as a proof of concept. This
72+
experimental API allows us to utilize `async`/`await` in SwiftWasm apps for browsers and Node.js
73+
like this:
74+
75+
```swift
76+
import JavaScriptEventLoop
77+
import JavaScriptKit
78+
79+
JavaScriptEventLoop.install()
80+
let fetch = JSObject.global.fetch.function!.async
81+
82+
func printZen() async {
83+
let result = try! await fetch("https://api.github.com/zen").object!
84+
let text = try! await result.asyncing.text!()
85+
print(text)
86+
}
87+
88+
JavaScriptEventLoop.runAsync {
89+
await printZen()
90+
}
91+
```
92+
93+
### WebAssembly Micro Runtime
94+
95+
[@kateinoigakukun](https://github.com/kateinoigakukun) published [a Swift WebAssembly runtime
96+
package](https://github.com/swiftwasm/wamr-swift) powered by [the WebAssembly Micro Runtime
97+
project](https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasm-micro-runtime) (WAMR). This allows us to remove Wasmer
98+
dependency from `carton` and embed the WebAssembly runtime in the `carton` binary for use in
99+
commands such as `carton test`.
100+
101+
We were also able to test this package on Apple Silicon and submit [a PR
102+
upstream](https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasm-micro-runtime/pull/480) to make it work.
103+
104+
### DOMKit
105+
106+
Our long-term goal is to make [DOMKit](https://github.com/swiftwasm/DOMKit) the recommended library
107+
for type-safe interactions with Web APIs in SwiftWasm. While it's still at an early stage, we've
108+
updated it to [JavaScriptKit 0.9 and added support for `globalThis`](https://github.com/swiftwasm/DOMKit/pull/3).
109+
[In a separate PR](https://github.com/swiftwasm/DOMKit/pull/4) we've cleaned up unused code and
110+
fixed an event handlers crash.
111+
112+
### Tokamak
113+
114+
With enough changes to warrant a new release, we've published [Tokamak
115+
0.6.0](https://github.com/TokamakUI/Tokamak/releases/tag/0.6.0), which introduced support for
116+
the `Image` view loading images bundled as SwiftPM resources, implemented by
117+
[@j-f1](https://github.com/j-f1). It also adds the `PreferenceKey` protocol and related modifiers.
118+
developed by [@carson-katri](https://github.com/carson-katri).
119+
120+
Since then we've also added [the `PreviewProvider` protocol](https://github.com/TokamakUI/Tokamak/pull/328),
121+
[an implementation of `TextEditor`](https://github.com/TokamakUI/Tokamak/pull/329), and updated
122+
our [example code in `README.md` for script injection](https://github.com/TokamakUI/Tokamak/pull/332).
123+
Additionally, a contribution from [David Hunt](https://github.com/foscomputerservices) [added
124+
missing typealiases to TokamakDOM](https://github.com/TokamakUI/Tokamak/pull/331) that should improve
125+
compatibility with SwiftUI, while [Jed Fox](https://github.com/j-f1) removed [redundant `path` element
126+
from SVG output](https://github.com/TokamakUI/Tokamak/pull/341).
127+
128+
## Developer tools
129+
130+
### `carton`
131+
132+
We'd like to welcome [@thecb4](https://github.com/thecb4), who is the latest addition to the `carton`
133+
maintainers team! Thanks to his work, [project targets were restructured for better
134+
testability](https://github.com/swiftwasm/carton/pull/191), and
135+
now [`test`](https://github.com/swiftwasm/carton/pull/198), [`dev`, and `bundle`](https://github.com/swiftwasm/carton/pull/196)
136+
commands are covered with end-to-end tests.
137+
138+
There's [ongoing work](https://github.com/swiftwasm/carton/pull/195) to integrate [the WAMR
139+
package](https://github.com/swiftwasm/wamr-swift) mentioned above with the `carton test` command.
140+
Also, `carton` now [correctly handles system target dependencies
141+
in `Package.swift`](https://github.com/swiftwasm/carton/pull/189).
142+
143+
On top of that, stack traces from
144+
Chrome and Safari are [now supported in `carton dev` with proper symbol
145+
demangling](https://github.com/swiftwasm/carton/pull/186), thanks to the work by [@j-f1](https://github.com/j-f1).
146+
Additionally, [@yonihemi](https://github.com/yonihemi) submitted [a PR which integrates `carton`
147+
with libSwiftPM](https://github.com/swiftwasm/carton/pull/194) allowing us to reuse its model types.
148+
149+
Most of these changes were included in [0.9.0](https://github.com/swiftwasm/carton/releases/tag/0.9.0)
150+
and [0.9.1](https://github.com/swiftwasm/carton/releases/tag/0.9.1) releases published in December.
151+
152+
### `webidl2swift`
153+
154+
[`webidl2swift`](https://github.com/Apodini/webidl2swift) is the foundation on which
155+
our [DOMKit](https://github.com/swiftwasm/DOMKit/) framework is built. Web API across all browsers is specified in
156+
[the Web IDL format](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_IDL), which can then be parsed to generate
157+
type-safe bindings in Swift. The parser doesn't support all IDL files out there yet, but we've
158+
[updated dependencies and updated the code
159+
generator](https://github.com/Apodini/webidl2swift/pull/10) to certain JavaScriptKit types that
160+
previously were deprecated.
161+
162+
### WasmTransformer
163+
164+
There were a few changes to [the WasmTransformer package](https://github.com/swiftwasm/WasmTransformer),
165+
which we use in `carton` and intend to use in a few other dev tools. Specifically, we've [generalized
166+
section info parsing](https://github.com/swiftwasm/WasmTransformer/pull/12) across different transformers,
167+
[implemented a basic section size profiler](https://github.com/swiftwasm/WasmTransformer/pull/14),
168+
and [made the `TypeSection` type public](https://github.com/swiftwasm/WasmTransformer/pull/15) to
169+
make it easier to analyze sections of WebAssembly binaries.
170+
171+
### Gravity
172+
173+
We're excited to announce our new developer tool enabled by WasmTransformer.
174+
[Gravity](https://github.com/swiftwasm/gravity) is a binary code size profiler for WebAssembly built
175+
with WasmTransformer, [SwiftUI](https://developer.apple.com/xcode/swiftui/), and
176+
[TCA](https://github.com/pointfreeco/swift-composable-architecture/). It's an application for macOS
177+
that allows you to open a WebAssembly binary and view the size of different sections. Contents of
178+
some of the sections is also parsed for further analysis.
179+
180+
## Contributions
181+
182+
A lot of our progress with SwiftWasm wouldn't be possible without payments from our GitHub Sponsors.
183+
Their contribution is deeply appreciated and allows us to spend more time on SwiftWasm projects. You can
184+
see the list of sponsors and make your contribution on [our SwiftWasm organization sponsorship
185+
page](https://github.com/sponsors/swiftwasm), or personal sponsorship pages of [Carson
186+
Katri](https://github.com/sponsors/carson-katri), [Yuta
187+
Saito](https://github.com/sponsors/kateinoigakukun) and [Max
188+
Desiatov](https://github.com/sponsors/MaxDesiatov).
189+
190+
Thanks for reading! 👋

0 commit comments

Comments
 (0)