Paul Krill
Editor at Large

WebAssembly gets its own IDE

news
Apr 16, 20182 mins

The WebAssembly Studio beta helps developers get up to speed on the portable code format

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Credit: Bella67

Mozilla is developing an online IDE for the WebAssembly portable code format. The beta version is now available.

Called WebAssembly Studio, the IDE is intended to help developers learn and teach others about WebAssembly, which is also called Wasm. The code format promises to speed web application performance and has the support of major browser vendors, including Mozilla.

The features in WebAssembly Studio beta

The IDE project began in late 2017 when developers tried to merge two existing tools, WasmExplorer and WasmFiddle.

Features of the WebAssembly IDE include:

  • Support for the C, C++, and Rust languages. This support is now classified as primitive but should improve in subsequent betas. Compilation is mostly done server-side but plans call for doing more of this client-side. Plans also call for enabling support of any language that compiles to WebAssembly.
  • Editing of WebAssembly binary modules and test files.
  • Accessible tools, with many features offered in contextual menus.
  • Interactive embedding of WebAssembly Studio projects via the embedly system for embedding content.

For C and C++, the LLVM compiler back end is used but support for the Emscripten LLVM-to-JavaScript compiler is under consideration. Improvements also are planned for the user experience, performance, and error reporting, as is the ability to download and build WebAssembly Studio projects locally using familiar tools.

Where to download WebAssembly Studio

You can download WebAssembly Studio source code from GitHub. You can try out the WebAssembly Studio IDE online as well.

Paul Krill

Paul Krill is editor at large at InfoWorld. Paul has been covering computer technology as a news and feature reporter for more than 35 years, including 30 years at InfoWorld. He has specialized in coverage of software development tools and technologies since the 1990s, and he continues to lead InfoWorld’s news coverage of software development platforms including Java and .NET and programming languages including JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, and Go. Long trusted as a reporter who prioritizes accuracy, integrity, and the best interests of readers, Paul is sought out by technology companies and industry organizations who want to reach InfoWorld’s audience of software developers and other information technology professionals. Paul has won a “Best Technology News Coverage” award from IDG.

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