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Version: 0.82

Useful WebAssembly Tools

Beyond the wasmCloud toolchain, the WebAssembly community maintains many open source projects that are invaluable for Wasm users. This is a non-comprehensive list of tools we've found particularly useful.

WIT syntax highlighting (VSCode)​

Syntax highlighting can make WIT definitions easier to read. The VSCode extension maintained by the Bytecode Alliance brings a more legible WIT experience to your IDE.

WIT syntax highlighting

You can install via the extensions marketplace or manually. For a manual install, you will need npm. Run:

shell
git clone https://github.com/bytecodealliance/vscode-wit.git && cd vscode-wit
shell
npm ci && npm run install-plugin

WIT dependency management with wit-deps​

It's important to ensure consistency between the WIT dependencies defined in your deps.toml manifest and the actual files in your project. wit-deps is a simple dependency management CLI tool maintained by the Bytecode Alliance that ensures your dependencies are consistently and correctly populated.

You will need Rust and cargo. Install wit-deps by running:

shell
cargo install wit-deps-cli

Run wit-deps from the root of a wasmCloud project directory (one level above wit) to populate the deps directory with the definitions specified in deps.toml and create a deps.lock file:

shell
wit-deps

For more detail on wit-deps, see the documentation in the project README.

WebAssembly artifact manipulation with wasm-tools​

Sometimes you might want to observe or manipulate a component independently of wasmCloud—perhaps to view the component's WIT interface, compose Wasm components into one, or even for more niche jobs like converting a WebAssembly module to a component. The wasm-tools CLI tool is a utility belt with a long list of options.

You will need Rust and cargo. Install wasm-tools by running:

shell
cargo install wasm-tools

A standalone WebAssembly runtime: Wasmtime​

Wasmtime is the WebAssembly runtime used by the wasmCloud host. If you'd like to test a component against standalone Wasmtime or explore runtime features, you can also install Wasmtime locally and use it to run components.

To install on Linux or macOs run:

shell
curl https://wasmtime.dev/install.sh -sSf | bash

Virtualize components with WASI Virt​

WASI Virt allows you to encapsulate a virtualized component within another component. This is particularly useful when you want to use potentially sensitive WASI APIs such as Sockets and Filesystem but don't want to give them access to core operating system interfaces.

WASI Virt requires the nightly release channel for Rust:

bash
rustup toolchain install nightly

Install the wasi-virt command line tool with cargo:

bash
cargo +nightly install --git https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasi-virt