DOdomoritz·Nov 23, 2021Submission
17 points · Open discussionemscripten-core
emscripten
C++2011–2026
emscripten-core / emscripten
emscripten
Emscripten: An LLVM-to-WebAssembly Compiler
123Distinct people
148Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
27.8KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Emscripten: An LLVM-to-WebAssembly Compiler
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
- jashkenas/coffeescript · linked in 2 of the same discussions
- jupyterlite/jupyterlite · linked in 2 of the same discussions
- webassembly/binaryen · linked in 2 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 6:01:08 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year148 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2011-04-16 12:05:53 UTC to 2026-06-13 18:10:02 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | 2011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 13 | 3 | 10 |
| 2012 | 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 20 | 4 | 16 |
| 2013 | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 21 | 0 | 21 |
| 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 13 | 1 | 12 |
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 16 | 2 | 14 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 10 | 1 | 9 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 17 | 1 | 16 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 1 | 3 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 1 | 5 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 0 | 5 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 9 | 0 | 9 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
What Hacker News says
6 sourcesIt just means that the Javascript API shim between WASM and web APIs doesn't need to translate between numeric handles and Javascript object references anymore, making those shims much smaller, and maybe in some cases the shims can disappear completely.
(here's an example of such a shim for WebGPU in the Emscripten SDK: https://github.com/emscripten-core/emscripten/blob/main/src/...)
In V8 Release v9.6emscripten ships a "desktop GL" emulation library [0], which can have quite a bit of overhead. If you want something faster, you can use the native WebGL bindings [1]
[0] https://github.com/emscripten-core/emscripten/blob/main/src/...
[1] https://github.com/emscripten-core/emscripten/blob/main/test...
In React Renderer for Three.jsThis is a fairly well known project which fixes one of Vulkan's greatest shortcomings (some might say the lack of resource memory management is one of Vulkan's greatest features though), but I wonder if there are alternatives which provide most of the critical features but with a much smaller footprint. VMA is around 20kloc, which is about the same as jemalloc (23kloc). A general purpose allocator like jemalloc is overkill for many situations, but there are much smaller (yet slower) alternatives like Emscripten's emmalloc (which is just 1.4 kloc: https://github.com/emscripten-core/emscripten/blob/main/syst...).
Are there similar smaller alternatives for VMA?
As for the motivation: my 3D API wrapper around OpenGL, D3D11, Metal and WebGPU clocks in at 15kloc for all 3D backends, I'm hesitant to add a Vulkan backend exactly for problems like
Read the rest
doing my own memory management for Vulkan resources. If I would integrate VMA, this would more than double the line count just for the memory management of a single 3D backend which simply doesn't seem "right". See: https://github.com/floooh/sokol/blob/master/sokol_gfx.h
It appears to be noted in the readme for the repo [0]: "Emscripten compiles C and C++ to WebAssembly using LLVM and Binaryen." A 32-bit Clang is present in my own emsdk installation.
[0] https://github.com/emscripten-core/emscripten/
In WASM SYNTH, or, how music taught me the beauty of mathNote that there are 297 hidden items in that issue so you have to click "Load more..." ceil(297/60) times to read all of the comments about how APK packaging is soon necessary for latest Android devices so the termux package manager can't just dump executable binaries wherever.
FWIU:
- Android Q+ disallows exec() on anything in $HOME, which is where termux installed binaries that may have been writeable by the executing user.
- Binaries installed from APKs can be exec()'d, so termux must keep APK repacks rebuilt and uploaded to a play store.
- Termux shouldn't be installed from Google Play anymore: you should install termux from the F-Droid APK package repos, and it will install APKs instead of what it was doing.
- Compiling to WASM with e.g. emscripten or WASI was one considered alternative. "Emscripten & WASI & POSIX" https://github.com