bump version to 0.0~git20230113.4362b18-1~bpo12+pve1

[wasi-libc.git] / README.md

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-# WebAssembly Reference Sysroot
+# WASI Libc
 
-Caution: This is currently quite experimental and not generally usable yet!
+WASI Libc is a libc for WebAssembly programs built on top of WASI system calls.
+It provides a wide array of POSIX-compatible C APIs, including support for
+standard I/O, file I/O, filesystem manipulation, memory management, time, string,
+environment variables, program startup, and many other APIs.
 
-## What is this?
-
-This is a "reference sysroot", which is meant to be part of a common C ABI
-that can be shared across C libraries and compilers. While it's intended to
-(eventually) be usable in its own right, we fully expect other
-implementations to be used in practice by many different systems, though
-we do hope that in those cases, this library defines a useful ABI that can
-be followed.
+WASI Libc is sufficiently stable and usable for many purposes, as most of the
+POSIX-compatible APIs are stable, though it is continuing to evolve to better
+align with wasm and WASI. For example, pthread support is still a work in
+progress.
 
 ## Usage
 
-Obtain a WebAssembly-supporting C compiler, and then run:
+The easiest way to get started with this is to use [wasi-sdk], which includes a
+build of WASI Libc in its sysroot.
 
-```
-make WASM_CC=/path/to/wasm/supporting/c/compiler
+## Building from source
+
+To build a WASI sysroot from source, obtain a WebAssembly-supporting C compiler
+(currently this is only clang 10+, though we'd like to support other compilers as well),
+and then run:
+
+```sh
+make CC=/path/to/clang/with/wasm/support \
+     AR=/path/to/llvm-ar \
+     NM=/path/to/llvm-nm
 ```
 
 This makes a directory called "sysroot", by default. See the top of the Makefile
@@ -24,25 +32,20 @@ for customization options.
 
 To use the sysroot, use the `--sysroot=` option:
 
-```
+```sh
 /path/to/wasm/supporting/c/compiler --sysroot=/path/to/the/newly/built/sysroot ...
 ```
 
 to run the compiler using the newly built sysroot.
 
-## Why doesn't this contain a full libc implementation?
-
-In the short term, one of the main goals is just to provide a reference
-point for people already maintaining their own libc codebases, to help
-reduce interface incompatibilities between the several different
-environments out there.
+Note that Clang packages typically don't include cross-compiled builds of
+compiler-rt, libcxx, or libcxxabi, for `libclang_rt.builtins-wasm32.a`, libc++.a,
+or libc++abi.a, respectively, so they may not be usable without
+extra setup. This is one of the things [wasi-sdk] simplifies, as it includes
+cross-compiled builds of compiler-rt, libc++.a, and libc++abi.a.
 
-In the long term, there may some day be some form of standardized
-syscall/import layer for wasm which would could support a full
-"reference libc", at which point this repository might make sense as
-a place to host such a thing.
+## Arch Linux AUR package
+For Arch Linux users, there's an unofficial AUR package tracking this git repo that can be installed under the name [wasi-libc-git].
 
-In between, if there are specific pieces of libc functionality which
-people would find useful to have here, and which don't depend on any
-syscalls, we could add them, using code from existing third-party
-codebases as appropriate.
+[wasi-sdk]: https://github.com/WebAssembly/wasi-sdk
+[wasi-libc-git]: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/wasi-libc-git/