482a3d06c3
This commit implements the idea of a new ABI for the WebAssembly target, one called `"wasm"`. This ABI is entirely of my own invention and has no current precedent, but I think that the addition of this ABI might help solve a number of issues with the WebAssembly targets. When `wasm32-unknown-unknown` was first added to Rust I naively "implemented an abi" for the target. I then went to write `wasm-bindgen` which accidentally relied on details of this ABI. Turns out the ABI definition didn't match C, which is causing issues for C/Rust interop. Currently the compiler has a "wasm32 bindgen compat" ABI which is the original implementation I added, and it's purely there for, well, `wasm-bindgen`. Another issue with the WebAssembly target is that it's not clear to me when and if the default C ABI will change to account for WebAssembly's multi-value feature (a feature that allows functions to return multiple values). Even if this does happen, though, it seems like the C ABI will be guided based on the performance of WebAssembly code and will likely not match even what the current wasm-bindgen-compat ABI is today. This leaves a hole in Rust's expressivity in binding WebAssembly where given a particular import type, Rust may not be able to import that signature with an updated C ABI for multi-value. To fix these issues I had the idea of a new ABI for WebAssembly, one called `wasm`. The definition of this ABI is "what you write maps straight to wasm". The goal here is that whatever you write down in the parameter list or in the return values goes straight into the function's signature in the WebAssembly file. This special ABI is for intentionally matching the ABI of an imported function from the environment or exporting a function with the right signature. With the addition of a new ABI, this enables rustc to: * Eventually remove the "wasm-bindgen compat hack". Once this ABI is stable wasm-bindgen can switch to using it everywhere. Afterwards the wasm32-unknown-unknown target can have its default ABI updated to match C. * Expose the ability to precisely match an ABI signature for a WebAssembly function, regardless of what the C ABI that clang chooses turns out to be. * Continue to evolve the definition of the default C ABI to match what clang does on all targets, since the purpose of that ABI will be explicitly matching C rather than generating particular function imports/exports. Naturally this is implemented as an unstable feature initially, but it would be nice for this to get stabilized (if it works) in the near-ish future to remove the wasm32-unknown-unknown incompatibility with the C ABI. Doing this, however, requires the feature to be on stable because wasm-bindgen works with stable Rust. |
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| Cargo.toml | ||
| README.md | ||
librustc_target contains some very low-level details that are
specific to different compilation targets and so forth.
For more information about how rustc works, see the rustc dev guide.