Wasmer is a fast and secure WebAssembly runtime that allows super lightweight containers to run anywhere
A few days ago it was announced release of the new version of the Wasmer 4.0 project, in which various changes have been added, of which stands out, for example, the new architecture that allows you to connect custom runners, the stabilization of WASI, WAPM unification in Wasmer and integration of Wasmer Edge.
For those who don't know about Wasmer, they should know that is a runtime for executing WebAssembly modules that can be used to build universal applications that can run on different operating systems, as well as for isolated execution of untrusted code.
The ability to run the same application on different platforms is provided by compiling the code into low-level WebAssembly intermediate code that can run on any operating system or be embedded in programs in other programming languages. Programs are lightweight containers that run WebAssembly pseudocode. These containers are not tied to the operating system and can contain code originally written in any programming language.
Main novelties of Wasmer 4.0
In this new version of Wasmer 4.0 that is presented, the integrated support for cloud computing platform Wasmer Edge, which allows you to interact with Wasmer Edge directly through the wasme CLIr. Wasmer Edge it is a decentralized platform without server that allows you to run applications on other hosts in the edge network.
The new platform combines the affordability of Cloudflare Workers, the simplicity of Heroku, and the functionality of AWS Lambda. The platform can scale from a single server to large distributed clusters. Compared to Cloudflare Workers and AWS Lambda, applications running on the Wasmer Edge can process arbitrary TCP service requests, run any HTTP application, run applications in the browser and on a smartphone.
At this time, you can run static websites, any Rust server using tokio (such as Axum), although in the future it is planned to support Flask, Django, WordPress, Ruby on Rails, Node, among others.
Another of the changes that stands out in this new version of Wasmer 4.0 is that the WASIX API support. wasix is the long-term stabilization and support of existing WASI ABI, plus additional non-intrusive system call extensions that fill in the missing gaps enough to allow real, practical, and useful applications to be compiled and used now. WASI extends features for full POSIX compatibility. With WASIX, Wasmer can run applications that use multithreading, network sockets, forking child processes, and other advanced features.
In addition to this in Wasmer 4.0, we can also find that a new execution architecture has been implemented which allows you to run any type of application on WebAssembly and extend the ABI without releasing new runtime versions. Currently, they are supported three executors: wasix (ABI WASIX compatibility), script (run programs compiled in Emscripten) and WCGI (allows you to create CGI scripts in WebAssembly).
On the other hand, it is also highlighted that WAPM package manager functionality has been integrated, so now all wapm utility commands for publishing and maintaining packages are integrated into the wasmer CLI. The purpose of the integration is to decrease the significant burden for development and also that WAPM has only been adopted by Wasmer.
Finally, it should be mentioned that the programs are distributed in the form of ordinary WebAssembly modules, which can be managed using the WAPM package manager. Wasmer is also available as a library that can be used to embed WebAssembly code in Rust, C/C++, C#, D, Python, JavaScript, Go, PHP, Ruby, Elixir, and Java programs.
The code of the project is written in Rust and is distributed under the MIT license and you can check more about it, In the following link.
How to install Wasmer?
For those interested in being able to install the new version, they only have to open a terminal and in it they must type the following command:
curl https://get.wasmer.io -sSfL | sh