WASM / WASI

Drop a .wasm into Files and run it. The interpreter is in the app; Apple does not sign the module.

Wawona prefers native in-process ports when we can ship them (zsh, uutils, weston-terminal, foot, …). Those are real platform binaries inside the reviewed app.

Wasm is not platform-native. That is a real tradeoff: no Mach-O/dlopen modules, no Alpine apk into a guest Linux userspace, and performance sits behind an interpreter (Pulley on Apple mobile). It is a bummer next to a true native port.

What you get instead is a portable Wawona Runtime (wwn-wasm) that developers and users can target once and run across Wawona with full App Store / Play compliance:

  • Compile to WASI P1 or P2 (.wasm bytecode as a document / package)
  • Install with wpm (or drop into Files) from the Mode A registry repo.wawona.io/wasm
  • The reviewed Runtime in the signed app interprets the module. Apple does not sign the .wasm, and there is no unsigned Mach-O download path

There is no Mode B package channel for Wasm. Jailbreak .deb APT is separate (/jailbreak/). Store Runtime never needs Mode B to install packages.

Mode B IPAs (TrollStore or Sileo) may JIT-execute the same /wasm/ packages when the JIT entitlement is present. That is an execute backend on the Mode B IPA, not a second registry. App Store builds stay interpreter-only (no Wasm JIT).

Milestone: Support WASI P1 P2 WASM!. Engineering: wasm-wasi.md, wasm-package-manager.md.

On device

  1. Put tool.wasm in the Wawona Documents folder (Files.app, iTunes File Sharing, or scp), or install with wpm from repo.wawona.io/wasm.
  2. In the on-device shell:
help
ls $WAWONA_ROOTFS/usr/bin
wasm ./tool.wasm hello
./tool.wasm hello

Compile (no Nix)

# Rust. Https://rustup.rs
rustup target add wasm32-wasip1
cargo build --target wasm32-wasip1 --release

# Go 1.21+. Https://go.dev/dl/
GOOS=wasip1 GOARCH=wasm go build -o tool.wasm

# Swift 6.2+ wasm SDK (no Foundation)
# see examples/wayland-shm/swift/build.sh

Wayland client (Rust, Go, or Swift. Same wl_shm + xdg window):

cd examples/wayland-shm
./rust/build.sh    # or ./go/build.sh or ./swift/build.sh

Demos: wwn-wasm/examples.

Package manager (wpm)

wpm is Wawona Runtime’s dedicated package manager: iSH-like UX for Wasm packages, not .deb and not OCI containers. Default registry: repo.wawona.io/wasm (store-safe Mode A). Phase 1 ships the local store + CLI + registry client in wwn-wasm.

See Mode A and Mode B and wasm-package-manager.md.

watchOS keeps the runtime off (size). macOS may use Cranelift. Native ports stay first-class whenever we have one.