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Task #3329

Updated by Jason Ish over 4 years ago

This ticket is to capture thoughts and research about using WASM for: 
 * A Lua alternative: matching and outputs (where Lua is used) 
 * As a module format for dynamically loadable modules/plugins 

 WASM as a Lua Alternative 
 * WASM modules run in a very restrictive execution environment where they cannot access the network, files, etc.  
 * This might be OK for pure algorithmic uses, such as a module that calculates entropy. 
 * But is not suitable if the module requires access to external files, either to read in data from an external source (for example in a Lua rule), or writing to a custom log file (a Lua output). 
 * WASM also requires more overhead on the authors part. Once they have chosen a lanuage, they will have to configure their toolchain to output WASM. While in some cases this may be trivial, it is more overhead than writing a Lua script. 

 WASM WAS for Dynamically Loadable Modules 
 * WASM may be more interesting for dynamically loadable modules, but its restricted environment may not make that very popular.  
 * From my understanding it would not be possible to implement a custom database or Kakfa style output as a WASM module. However I could be wrong as I've seen examples of Nginx recompiled to WASM, so more research is required here. 
 * Its restrictions may make it not popular as a format for dynamically loadable modules, however the strict environment it runs in would be nice. But writing plugins in Rust and loading as a .so will ultimately be more flexible (but less secure). 

 WASM outside of the browser also appears to be very young and rapidly evolving. 

 I also found AssemblyScript (https://github.com/AssemblyScript/assemblyscript) interesting. This is a compiler for a subset of TypeScript that compiles to WASM. 




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