Distribute wasm-pack binary via cargo

[pablosichert]

Hi there!

Would it be possible to distribute the wasm-pack binary via cargo, instead of requiring users to run curl https://rustwasm.github.io/wasm-pack/installer/init.sh -sSf | sh?

It would make keeping track of the installation easier and would automatically provide the binary when wasm-pack is added as dependency to cargo.toml.

Rust bindgen also distributes via cargo.

[Pauan]

Although it isn't well advertised, you actually can do cargo install wasm-pack. Of course this will build the binary from source, because Cargo doesn't currently support shipping pre-compiled binaries.

[pablosichert]

Oh, I see! I think it would be nice to state this on that page as well: https://rustwasm.github.io/wasm-pack/installer/.

[Pauan]

@pablosichert It actually already does, but you have to click on the display all supported installers link (that's what I meant by "it isn't well advertised").

Maybe we could just always display it, without requiring a click on the link. @ashleygwilliams what do you think?

[ashleygwilliams]

i definitely agree that we should not hide the additional installer instrucitons. i would happily accept a pull request for this.

i have had an issue open for this for a long time actually: #355

i'm going to close this a duplicate :)

[lynn]

I don't think this issue is a duplicate of #355. That one is about which install options to display on the website. This issue is about distributing a wasm-pack binary via cargo.

Four years ago @Pauan commented that

Cargo doesn't currently support shipping pre-compiled binaries

but I'm not sure if that's still true (I'm reminded of the recent situation surrounding serde_derive).

[Pauan]

but I'm not sure if that's still true (I'm reminded of the recent situation surrounding serde_derive).

It's still true today, you can't ship pre-compiled binaries with Cargo, cargo install will always recompile the program from scratch.

rust-cli/team#8

rust-cli/team#20

So the current best way to distribute binaries is to use GitHub Releases (which is what wasm-bindgen does).