December issue of "What's new in SwiftWasm"

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

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+---
+date: 2021-12-11 14:34
+description: An update on what happened in the SwiftWasm ecosystem during December 2020.
+---
+# What's new in SwiftWasm #5
+
+Happy New Year everyone! Here's a digest of what happened with [SwiftWasm](https://swiftwasm.org) in
+December of 2020, published with a slight delay (it's 2021 already after all 😅).
+
+## SwiftWasm community
+
+One thing we forgot to mention in our November update is that the SwiftWasm community now has
+[its own Discord server](https://discord.gg/ashJW8T8yp). In case you prefer Slack to Discord, we
+recommend you to join the `#webassembly` channel in [the SwiftPM Slack
+workspace](https://swift-package-manager.herokuapp.com/).
+
+In December we saw a lot of projects built with SwiftWasm shared by the community. Here a few most
+noteworthy:
+
+* [An online Multi-Player Meme Party Game written in Swift](https://github.com/nerdsupremacist/memes),
+using [Vapor](https://vapor.codes/) for backend and SwiftWasm with
+[Tokamak](https://tokamak.dev) for frontend, built by [Mathias Quintero](https://github.com/nerdsupremacist).
+* [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).
+* [WebAssembly example with React and SwiftWasm](https://expressflow.com/blog/posts/webassembly-example-with-react-and-swiftwasm) by
+[Martin Vasko](https://github.com/martinvasko).
+
+## Documentation
+
+### SwiftWasm book
+
+We're working on tracking down all the possible edge cases when porting code from other
+platforms in [the SwiftWasm book](https://book.swiftwasm.org/). Previously we were asked how to port
+code that depends on the `Darwin` module on Apple platforms or `Glibc` on Linux. We recommend
+using the `WASILibc` module, which obviously somewhat differs from libc on other platforms. We've
+added [a corresponding note clarifying this](https://book.swiftwasm.org/getting-started/libc.html)
+to the book.
+
+## Toolchain
+
+As the Swift team already announced [the release process for the 5.4
+version](https://forums.swift.org/t/swift-5-4-release-process/41936), we started preparing our
+corresponding SwiftWasm 5.4 release. The [`swiftwasm-release/5.4`](https://github.com/swiftwasm/swift/tree/swiftwasm-release/5.4)
+branch in our fork now [tracks the upstream `release/5.4`
+branch](https://github.com/swiftwasm/swift/pull/2380), as we plan to tag our own 5.4.0 later
+this year.
+
+Additionally, we made sure that the fork of our toolchain
+[can be compiled on Apple Silicon Macs](https://github.com/swiftwasm/swift/pull/2405). While GitHub
+Actions doesn't provide CI agents for the M1 architecture, the SwiftWasm toolchain can be built
+locally for Apple Silicon, and we hope to provide a prebuilt distribution archive for it in some
+future release.
+
+### Experimental async/await support
+
+[@kateinoigakukun](https://github.com/kateinoigakukun) enabled [experimental concurrency support
+in SwiftWasm](https://github.com/swiftwasm/swift/pull/2408) and fixed several issues that
+previously prevented us from enabling `async`/`await` in development snapshots. Currently, starting with
+[swift-wasm-DEVELOPMENT-SNAPSHOT-2021-01-02-a](https://github.com/swiftwasm/swift/releases/tag/swift-wasm-DEVELOPMENT-SNAPSHOT-2021-01-02-a),
+the toolchain only supports a single-threaded task executor. This executor is suitable for usage in
+standalone WASI hosts such as Wasmer or Wasmtime. Unfortunately, it blocks the JavaScript event loop
+until all jobs are completed, and is unable to run any jobs created after the first event loop
+cycle. While this makes it unsuitable for JavaScript environments, we were able to work around that
+in JavaScriptKit as discussed in the next section.
+
+## Libraries
+
+### JavaScriptKit
+
+[@kateinoigakukun](https://github.com/kateinoigakukun) started implementing [a Swift concurrency
+task executor](https://github.com/swiftwasm/JavaScriptKit/pull/112) integrated with the JavaScript
+event loop. There are still several issues, but it's working well as a proof of concept. This
+experimental API allows us to utilize `async`/`await` in SwiftWasm apps for browsers and Node.js
+like this:
+
+```swift
+import JavaScriptEventLoop
+import JavaScriptKit
+
+JavaScriptEventLoop.install()
+let fetch = JSObject.global.fetch.function!.async
+
+func printZen() async {
+  let result = try! await fetch("https://api.github.com/zen").object!
+  let text = try! await result.asyncing.text!()
+  print(text)
+}
+
+JavaScriptEventLoop.runAsync {
+  await printZen()
+}
+```
+
+### WebAssembly Micro Runtime
+
+[@kateinoigakukun](https://github.com/kateinoigakukun) published [a Swift WebAssembly runtime
+package](https://github.com/swiftwasm/wamr-swift) powered by [the WebAssembly Micro Runtime
+project](https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasm-micro-runtime) (WAMR). This allows us to remove Wasmer
+dependency from `carton` and embed the WebAssembly runtime in the `carton` binary for use in
+commands such as `carton test`.
+
+We were also able to test this package on Apple Silicon and submit [a PR
+upstream](https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasm-micro-runtime/pull/480) to make it work.
+
+### DOMKit
+
+Our long-term goal is to make [DOMKit](https://github.com/swiftwasm/DOMKit) the recommended library
+for type-safe interactions with Web APIs in SwiftWasm. While it's still at an early stage, we've
+updated it to [JavaScriptKit 0.9 and added support for `globalThis`](https://github.com/swiftwasm/DOMKit/pull/3).
+[In a separate PR](https://github.com/swiftwasm/DOMKit/pull/4) we've cleaned up unused code and
+fixed an event handlers crash.
+
+### Tokamak
+
+With enough changes to warrant a new release, we've published [Tokamak
+0.6.0](https://github.com/TokamakUI/Tokamak/releases/tag/0.6.0), which introduced support for
+the `Image` view loading images bundled as SwiftPM resources, implemented by
+[@j-f1](https://github.com/j-f1). It also adds the `PreferenceKey` protocol and related modifiers.
+developed by [@carson-katri](https://github.com/carson-katri).
+
+Since then we've also added [the `PreviewProvider` protocol](https://github.com/TokamakUI/Tokamak/pull/328),
+[an implementation of `TextEditor`](https://github.com/TokamakUI/Tokamak/pull/329), and updated
+our [example code in `README.md` for script injection](https://github.com/TokamakUI/Tokamak/pull/332).
+Additionally, a contribution from [David Hunt](https://github.com/foscomputerservices) [added
+missing typealiases to TokamakDOM](https://github.com/TokamakUI/Tokamak/pull/331) that should improve
+compatibility with SwiftUI, while [Jed Fox](https://github.com/j-f1) removed [redundant `path` element
+from SVG output](https://github.com/TokamakUI/Tokamak/pull/341).
+
+## Developer tools
+
+### `carton`
+
+We'd like to welcome [@thecb4](https://github.com/thecb4), who is the latest addition to the `carton`
+maintainers team! Thanks to his work, [project targets were restructured for better
+testability](https://github.com/swiftwasm/carton/pull/191), and
+now [`test`](https://github.com/swiftwasm/carton/pull/198), [`dev`, and `bundle`](https://github.com/swiftwasm/carton/pull/196)
+commands are covered with end-to-end tests.
+
+There's [ongoing work](https://github.com/swiftwasm/carton/pull/195) to integrate [the WAMR
+package](https://github.com/swiftwasm/wamr-swift) mentioned above with the `carton test` command.
+Also, `carton` now [correctly handles system target dependencies
+in `Package.swift`](https://github.com/swiftwasm/carton/pull/189).
+
+On top of that, stack traces from
+Chrome and Safari are [now supported in `carton dev` with proper symbol
+demangling](https://github.com/swiftwasm/carton/pull/186), thanks to the work by [@j-f1](https://github.com/j-f1).
+Additionally, [@yonihemi](https://github.com/yonihemi) submitted [a PR which integrates `carton`
+with libSwiftPM](https://github.com/swiftwasm/carton/pull/194) allowing us to reuse its model types.
+
+Most of these changes were included in [0.9.0](https://github.com/swiftwasm/carton/releases/tag/0.9.0)
+and [0.9.1](https://github.com/swiftwasm/carton/releases/tag/0.9.1) releases published in December.
+
+### `webidl2swift`
+
+[`webidl2swift`](https://github.com/Apodini/webidl2swift) is the foundation on which
+our [DOMKit](https://github.com/swiftwasm/DOMKit/) framework is built. Web API across all browsers is specified in
+[the Web IDL format](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_IDL), which can then be parsed to generate
+type-safe bindings in Swift. The parser doesn't support all IDL files out there yet, but we've
+[updated dependencies and updated the code
+generator](https://github.com/Apodini/webidl2swift/pull/10) to certain JavaScriptKit types that
+previously were deprecated.
+
+### WasmTransformer
+
+There were a few changes to [the WasmTransformer package](https://github.com/swiftwasm/WasmTransformer),
+which we use in `carton` and intend to use in a few other dev tools. Specifically, we've [generalized
+section info parsing](https://github.com/swiftwasm/WasmTransformer/pull/12) across different transformers,
+[implemented a basic section size profiler](https://github.com/swiftwasm/WasmTransformer/pull/14),
+and [made the `TypeSection` type public](https://github.com/swiftwasm/WasmTransformer/pull/15) to
+make it easier to analyze sections of WebAssembly binaries.
+
+### Gravity
+
+We're excited to announce our new developer tool enabled by WasmTransformer.
+[Gravity](https://github.com/swiftwasm/gravity) is a binary code size profiler for WebAssembly built
+with WasmTransformer, [SwiftUI](https://developer.apple.com/xcode/swiftui/), and
+[TCA](https://github.com/pointfreeco/swift-composable-architecture/). It's an application for macOS
+that allows you to open a WebAssembly binary and view the size of different sections. Contents of
+some of the sections is also parsed for further analysis.
+
+## Contributions
+
+A lot of our progress with SwiftWasm wouldn't be possible without payments from our GitHub Sponsors.
+Their contribution is deeply appreciated and allows us to spend more time on SwiftWasm projects. You can
+see the list of sponsors and make your contribution on [our SwiftWasm organization sponsorship
+page](https://github.com/sponsors/swiftwasm), or personal sponsorship pages of [Carson
+Katri](https://github.com/sponsors/carson-katri), [Yuta
+Saito](https://github.com/sponsors/kateinoigakukun) and [Max
+Desiatov](https://github.com/sponsors/MaxDesiatov).
+
+Thanks for reading! 👋