wasmi_core 0.5.0

Core primitives for the wasmi WebAssembly interpreter
Documentation

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# `wasmi`- WebAssembly (Wasm) Interpreter

`wasmi` is an efficient WebAssembly interpreter with low-overhead and support
for embedded environment such as WebAssembly itself.

At Parity we are using `wasmi` in [Substrate](https://github.com/paritytech/substrate)
as the execution engine for our WebAssembly based smart contracts.
Furthermore we run `wasmi` within the Substrate runtime which is a WebAssembly
environment itself and driven via [Wasmtime] at the time of this writing.
As such `wasmi`'s implementation requires a high degree of correctness and
Wasm specification conformance.

Since `wasmi` is relatively lightweight compared to other Wasm virtual machines
such as Wasmtime it is also a decent option for initial prototyping.

[Wasmtime]: https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime

## Distinct Features

The following list states some of the distinct features of `wasmi`.

- Primarily concerned about
    - correct and deterministic WebAssembly execution.
    - WebAssembly specification compliance.
- Can itself be compiled to and executed via WebAssembly.
- Low-overhead and cross-platform WebAssembly runtime.
- Loosely mirrors the [Wasmtime API]https://docs.rs/wasmtime/
  to act as a drop-in solution.

## WebAssembly Proposals

The new `wasmi` engine supports a variety of WebAssembly proposals and will support even more of them in the future.

| WebAssembly Proposal | Status | Comment |
|:--|:--:|:--|
| [`mutable-global`] || |
| [`saturating-float-to-int`] || |
| [`sign-extension`] || |
| [`multi-value`] || |
| [`reference-types`] || Planned but not yet implemented. Low priority. |
| [`bulk-memory`] || Planned but not yet implemented. Low priority. |
| [`simd`] || No support is planned for `wasmi`. |
| [`tail-calls`] || Not yet part of the Wasm standard but support in `wasmi` is planned. Low priority. |

[`mutable-global`]: https://github.com/WebAssembly/mutable-global
[`saturating-float-to-int`]: https://github.com/WebAssembly/nontrapping-float-to-int-conversions
[`sign-extension`]: https://github.com/WebAssembly/sign-extension-ops
[`multi-value`]: https://github.com/WebAssembly/multi-value
[`reference-types`]: https://github.com/WebAssembly/reference-types
[`bulk-memory`]: https://github.com/WebAssembly/bulk-memory-operations
[`simd` ]: https://github.com/webassembly/simd
[`tail-calls`]: https://github.com/WebAssembly/tail-call

## Building

Clone `wasmi` from our official repository and then build using the standard `cargo` procedure:

```
git clone https://github.com/paritytech/wasmi.git
cd wasmi
cargo build
```

## Testing

In order to test `wasmi` you need to initialize and update the Git submodules using:

```
git submodule update --init --recursive
```

Alternatively you can provide `--recursive` flag to `git clone` command while cloning the repository:

```
git clone https://github.com/paritytech/wasmi.git ---recursive
```

After Git submodules have been initialized and updated you can test using:

```
cargo test --workspace
```

## Development

Before pushing a PR to our repository we would like you to execute the
`scripts/run-local-ci.sh` script that can be found in the repository's root folder.

## Supported Platforms

Supported platforms are primarily Linux, MacOS, Windows and WebAssembly.

Use the following command in order to produce a WebAssembly build:

```
cargo build --no-default-features --target wasm32-unknown-unknown
```

## Production Builds

In order to reap the most performance out of `wasmi` we highly recommended
to compile the `wasmi` crate using the following Cargo `profile`:

```toml
[profile.release]
lto = "fat"
codegen-units = 1
```

When compiling for the WebAssembly target we highly recommend to post-optimize
`wasmi` using [Binaryen]'s `wasm-opt` tool since our experiments displayed a
80-100% performance improvements when executed under Wasmtime and also
slightly smaller Wasm binaries.

[Binaryen]: https://github.com/WebAssembly/binaryen

## Benchmarks

In order to benchmark `wasmi` use the following command:

```
cargo bench
```

**Note:** Benchmarks can be filtered by `compile_and_validate`,
`instantiate` and `execute` flags given to `cargo bench`.
For example `cargo bench execute` will only execute the benchmark
tests that test the performance of WebAssembly execution.

## License

`wasmi` is primarily distributed under the terms of both the MIT
license and the APACHE license (Version 2.0), at your choice.

See `LICENSE-APACHE` and `LICENSE-MIT` for details.

## Contribution

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted
for inclusion in `wasmi` by you, as defined in the APACHE 2.0 license, shall be
dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.