wasm2native

A WebAssembly binary to native code compiler

About the Project

I started the project to learn the details of building an industrial-level compiler with LLVM technologies and modern compiler architecture brought from the Swift compiler. The idea originated in the process when I was trying to do some optimizations on the level of the Swift compiler for the product of the company that I'm serving. Since I encountered a lot of questions about how to use LLVM in the meanwhile, I brought out the idea that the best way to have answers to those questions is to build a compiler with LLVM technologies and reuse the architecture of the Swift compiler.

But the project itself is open for contribution though it was started from my interest.

WebAssembly is chosen because of its simplicity in grammar. This can free developers of the project from complex frontend implementations and enables them to focus on the middle-end and backend.

Moreover, WebAssembly + WASI is a good candidate for serverless and edge computation. Investing in WebAssembly is not a bad choice at the current moment.

Status of the Project

Roadmap

• 1. Emit empty object file
• 2. Emit object file with simple WebAssembly binary
• 3. Introduce test-driven infrastructure for wasm-to-IR verification
• 4. Implement remaining register/stack/static-memory instructions
• 5. Implement dynamic memory runtime support and instructions
• 6. Implement the compiler driver
• 7. Implement import and export support

Status of Components and Tools

Status Transition: None -> Prototype -> Ported from Swift -> WIP -> Done

Components	Status	Tools	Status
ABI	Ported from Swift	Driver	Prototype
AST	WIP
Basic	WIP
Driver	Ported from Swift
DriverTool	Ported from Swift
Frontend	WIP
FrontendTool	WIP
IRGen	WIP
Localization	Ported from Swift
Options	Ported from Swift
Parse	WIP
Runtime	None
Sema	WIP
TBDGen	Ported from Swift

Build and Run the Code

Apple Silicon Mac is the only supported host at the moment.

Prerequisites

To build the project, you have to get CMake and Ninja installed on your computer.

For macOS:

Developers who use macOS may have Homebrew installed on their computers first.

brew install cmake ninja

Getting Started

By running the following code you can get the mono-repo setup and the project built with debug configuration.

# make the monorepo directory
mkdir wasm2native-project

# change the directory to the monorepo directory
cd wasm2native-project

# clone the project with git
git clone https://github.com/WeZZard/wasm2native.git

# change the directory to the project directory
cd wasm2native

# clone the monorepo repositories
utils/update-checkout --clone

# build the project with debug configuration
utils/build

Further Reading

• Get the Develop Environment Ready
• Understanding the Project Hierarchy
• Understanding the Build Script
• Understanding the Update Checkout Script
• Testing
• Debugging
• Become a Contributor

License

Apache 2.0 with Runtime Library Exception