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WebAssembly
gc
WebAssembly2017–2026
WebAssembly / gc · Archived

gc

Branch of the spec repo scoped to discussion of GC integration in WebAssembly

57Distinct people
68Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
1.1KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Branch of the spec repo scoped to discussion of GC integration in WebAssembly

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

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 2:04:58 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 year68 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2017-04-29 23:58:05 UTC to 2026-10-21 12:17:44 UTC.

0510152017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 10 mentions; 0 submissions, 10 comments20172018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 8 mentions; 0 submissions, 8 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments20212022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 10 mentions; 2 submissions, 8 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 14 mentions; 1 submissions, 13 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 0 submissions, 7 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* 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
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC10010
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC808
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC505
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1028
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC14113
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC707
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
GC Proposal for WebAssembly This repository is a clone of github.com/WebAssembly/spec/. It is meant for discussion, prototype specification and implementation of a proposal to add garbage collection (GC) support to WebAssembly. See the overview for a high-level summary and rationale of the proposal. Note: the concrete details here are out of date. See the MVP for an up-to-date overview of the concrete language extensions that are proposed for the first stage of GC support in Wasm. See the Post-MVP for possible future extensions in later stages. See the modified spec for the completed spec for the first-stage proposal described in MVP.md. This repository is based on the function references proposal as a baseline and includes all respective changes. Original README from upstream repository follows... spec This repository holds a prototypical reference implementation for WebAssembly, which is currently serving as the official specification. Eventually, we expect to produce a specification either written in human-readable prose or in a formal specification language. It also holds the WebAssembly testsuite, which tests numerous aspects of conformance to the spec. View the work-in-progress spec at webassembly.github.io/spec. At this time, the contents of this repository are under development and known to be "incomplet and inkorrect". Participation is welcome. Discussions about new features, significant semantic changes, or any specification change likely to generate substantial discussion should take place in the WebAssembly design repository first, so that this spec repository can remain focused. And please follow the guidelines for contributing. citing For citing WebAssembly in LaTeX, use this bibtex file.
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

4 sources
I think there are some misconceptions here. Wasm on the server using WASI (which nowadays is probably either wasmtime or wasmer) doesn't have anything to do with Javascript. Actually, wasm on the browser doesn't have anything to do with javascript either! This is actually unfortunate, because wasm in the browser can't natively interface with JS's GC yet [0]. On the other hand, I think a great strength of wasm is that wasm isn't tied to a single memory management system: if it forced a GC on you, it would also need to dictate the memory layout, and would need to determine how this GC gets run, all this would add unnecessary overheard and inflexibility when compiling low-level languages. Or when compiling any language that don't quite conform to the memory management model, different languages want to manage memory differently. This is a pa
Read the rest
in in the JVM and wasm fixed that. Another strength is vendor neutrality. All major browsers embraced wasm, and it's got multiple implementations in the server as well. There isn't really a dominant implementation that others must conform, and wasm tools are interoperable between implementations. There are also embedded implementations (I know of wamr and wasm3). On a darker note, I'm sad to see see one WASI runtime bashing another [1]; I wish the competition was more cordial, or at least, more professional. [0] see the issues in this repo https://github.com/WebAssembly/gc [1] https://wasmer.io/wasmer-vs-wasmtime - makes outlandish claims and uses benchmarks without clearly specifying what is being benchmarked (ideally it would link to a Github repo)
In WAGI: WebAssembly Gateway Interface
Wasm is not basically assembler, it's (going to be) very high level: - https://github.com/WebAssembly/reference-types - https://github.com/webassembly/threads - https://github.com/WebAssembly/exception-handling - https://github.com/WebAssembly/function-references - https://github.com/WebAssembly/gc Though it is true that the original MVP was very barebone and could be compared to assembler. However, the reference types proposal has been shipped in all major browsers and is considered "finished".
In WebContainers: Run Node.js natively in the browser

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