Python WebAssembly (WASM) build

WARNING: WASM support is highly experimental! Lots of features are not working yet.

This directory contains configuration and helpers to facilitate cross compilation of CPython to WebAssembly (WASM). For now we support wasm32-emscripten builds for modern browser and for Node.js. It's not possible to build for wasm32-wasi out-of-the-box yet.

wasm32-emscripten build

Cross compiling to wasm32-emscripten platform needs the Emscripten tool chain and a build Python interpreter. All commands below are relative to a repository checkout.

Compile a build Python interpreter

mkdir -p builddir/build
pushd builddir/build
../../configure -C
make -j$(nproc)
popd

Fetch and build additional emscripten ports

embuilder build zlib bzip2

Cross compile to wasm32-emscripten for browser

mkdir -p builddir/emscripten-browser
pushd builddir/emscripten-browser

CONFIG_SITE=../../Tools/wasm/config.site-wasm32-emscripten \
  emconfigure ../../configure -C \
    --host=wasm32-unknown-emscripten \
    --build=$(../../config.guess) \
    --with-emscripten-target=browser \
    --with-build-python=$(pwd)/../build/python

emmake make -j$(nproc)
popd

Serve python.html with a local webserver and open the file in a browser.

emrun builddir/emscripten-browser/python.html

or

python3 -m http.server

Cross compile to wasm32-emscripten for node

mkdir -p builddir/emscripten-node
pushd builddir/emscripten-node

CONFIG_SITE=../../Tools/wasm/config.site-wasm32-emscripten \
  emconfigure ../../configure -C \
    --host=wasm32-unknown-emscripten \
    --build=$(../../config.guess) \
    --with-emscripten-target=node \
    --with-build-python=$(pwd)/../build/python

emmake make -j$(nproc)
popd

node --experimental-wasm-threads --experimental-wasm-bulk-memory builddir/emscripten-node/python.js

wasm32-emscripten limitations and issues

• Heap and stack are limited.
• Most stdlib modules with a dependency on external libraries are missing: ctypes, readline, sqlite3, ssl, and more.
• Shared extension modules are not implemented yet. All extension modules are statically linked into the main binary. The experimental configure option --enable-wasm-dynamic-linking enables dynamic extensions.
• Processes are not supported. System calls like fork, popen, and subprocess fail with ENOSYS or ENOSUP.
• Only AF_INET and AF_INET6 with SOCK_STREAM (TCP) or SOCK_DGRAM (UDP) are available. AF_UNIX is not supported.
• socketpair does not work.
• Blocking sockets are not available and non-blocking sockets don't work correctly, e.g. socket.accept crashes the runtime. gethostbyname does not resolve to a real IP address. IPv6 is not available.
• The select module is limited. select.select() crashes the runtime due to lack of exectfd support.
• Signal support is limited. signal.alarm, itimer, sigaction are not available or do not work correctly. SIGTERM exits the runtime.
• Most user, group, and permission related function and modules are not supported or don't work as expected, e.g.pwd module, grp module, os.setgroups, os.chown, and so on. lchown and `lchmod`` are not available.
• umask is a no-op.
• hard links (os.link) are not supported.
• Offset and iovec I/O functions (e.g. os.pread, os.preadv) are not available.
• os.mknod and os.mkfifo don't work and are disabled.
• Large file support crashes the runtime and is disabled.
• mmap module is unstable. flush (msync) can crash the runtime.
• Resource-related functions like os.nice and most functions of the resource module are not available.
• glibc extensions for date and time formatting are not available.
• locales module is affected by musl libc issues, bpo-46390.
• Python's object allocator obmalloc is disabled by default.
• ensurepip is not available.

wasm32-emscripten in browsers

• The bundled stdlib is limited. Network-related modules, distutils, multiprocessing, dbm, tests and similar modules are not shipped. All other modules are bundled as pre-compiled pyc files.
• Threading is not supported.

wasm32-emscripten in node

Node builds use NODERAWFS, USE_PTHREADS and PROXY_TO_PTHREAD linker options.

• Node RawFS allows direct access to the host file system.
• pthread support requires WASM threads and SharedArrayBuffer (bulk memory). The runtime keeps a pool of web workers around. Each web worker uses several file descriptors (eventfd, epoll, pipe).