heyimalex/syntect_wasm

Attempt to use syntect in the browser

syntect_wasm

Attempt to run syntect in the browser. Work in progress.

Progress

• Initial commit! Environment setup via docker-compose, lib with simple highlighting function exported.
• Get same-file building under wasm. Forked to ./same-file, added noop.rs which just returns errors for all of the main methods, and used [patch] to make cargo use it when building. This is necessary because of this issue.
• Get rust-onig building under wasm. Forked to ./rust-onig, commented lines 86-91 out because they would panic while building; the CARGO_CFG_TARGET_FAMILY env var wasn't set. Should probably fix this upstream since it's trivial.
• Wait until webassembly lands in llvm stable :sadface:
• ???
• Syntect is running in the browser!

Resources

• llvm-target-webassembly
• wasm object format
• wasm lld port
• emscripten with llbm webassembly backend

At this point everything in rust-land is compiling, but it fails at the link stage. I don't think that rust-ld (rust's fork of lld?) can link the (unstable) object format, but even if it could, I can't compile to the object format without building llvm from source with -DLLVM_EXPERIMENTAL_TARGETS_TO_BUILD=WebAssembly and aint nobody got time for that. But truthfully I am not very knowledgeable about all these things!

For future me, I think that if llvm with wasm is installed, you should be able to run the following and it may work.

EMCC_WASM_BACKEND=1 CC=emcc CFLAGS='-s WASM_OBJECT_FILES=1' wasm-pack build

Also for future me, remember that rust also supports an emscripten target! But I honestly have no interest in just getting this to work whatever means necessary.