Wasmtime 1.0 Released - Bytecode Alliance Declares It Production Ready

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Wasmtime 1.0 Released - Bytecode Alliance Declares It Production Ready

Way back in 2019 Intel, Mozilla, and Red Hat started the Bytecode Alliance as an initiative to promote running WebAssembly "everywhere" and expand the scope of WASM outside of the web browser. After being in development now for three years, Wasmtime 1.0 was released for this production-ready WebAssembly runtime...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Wasmtime-1.0-Released

[skeevy420]

Feel the rhythm!
Feel the rhyme!
Get on up, it’s Wasmtime!
Cool runnings!

[Vorpal]

So what is the actual use case of this, for me as an end user? Why do I want wasm outside browsers? Is it just for devs to be able to ship the same code for two environments? Does it offer some nice sandboxing? What's the selling point that would make me care?

[Markopolo]

So what is the actual use case of this, for me as an end user? Why do I want wasm outside browsers? Is it just for devs to be able to ship the same code for two environments? Does it offer some nice sandboxing? What's the selling point that would make me care?

the linked blog post has titled sections covering nearly all of your questions. Left out is the end user perspective, but that’s not surprising for a developer tool. with end users and developer tools, the benefits are intangible. In that respect this announcement is no different than a new C++ or rust release…

[ehansin]

Does anyone know if this could be on some level analogous to how JavaScript is used outside the browser with things like Node and Deno? Don't know much, but looking to learn more, got a few tabs open already!

[dragorth]

So what is the actual use case of this, for me as an end user? Why do I want wasm outside browsers? Is it just for devs to be able to ship the same code for two environments? Does it offer some nice sandboxing? What's the selling point that would make me care?

Nothing yet, however, it will have trickle down affects. Similar to how Java itself didn't directly affect the end-user, but devs choice to use it in the browser, on small mobile phones were all trickle down affects that users had to directly deal with.

[ssokolow]

So what is the actual use case of this, for me as an end user? Why do I want wasm outside browsers? Is it just for devs to be able to ship the same code for two environments? Does it offer some nice sandboxing? What's the selling point that would make me care?

Basically, developers can embed a sandboxed, platform-agnostic runtime in their projects which runs faster than languages like JavaScript and can be targeted by languages like C, C++, Rust, etc.

It could be very useful for things like plugins/mods that don't need to be either written in a scripting language or compiled separately for each platform the host application is targeting.

There's also WASI, which allows sandboxed command-line utilities to be written in it, which can only access APIs or paths passed in as permission tokens by the runtime environment.

[linuxgeex]

Does anyone know if this could be on some level analogous to how JavaScript is used outside the browser with things like Node and Deno? Don't know much, but looking to learn more, got a few tabs open already!

Yes, it's an alternative to Node.js but written in Rust so in theory it can be more secure / provide better isolation, so long as they have no bugs lol. Performance is very close between them on x86/x64, and Wasmtime actually outperforms Node by a healthy margin on ARM64.

[linuxgeex]

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Can't wrap my head around Phoronix Forum's algorithm for marking responses unapproved. phoronix really ought to look into public-domain software to do the job right.

[CommunityMember]

Can't wrap my head around Phoronix Forum's algorithm for marking responses unapproved.

Perhaps, like the TSA, or the IRS, the algorithm just occasionally picks a person/response at random to demonstrate that it can't possibly be biased.