WebAssembly / WebAssembly/WASI

clarify expectations around the workdir concept

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#765 2 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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P-cli S-inactive
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Rust
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Description

It is increasingly the case that people are conflating WASI with docker, likely due to the increase of tool integrations lately. Folks using docker are used to WORKDIR instructions and CLI overrides such as -workdir.

It isn't clear (to me) why the initial directory cannot be passed to a WASI command, similar to how we are able to pass ENV variables. We should at least document if the next WASI will continue to defer this to wasi-libc with an initial workdir (CWD) of "/", or understand what if any change is likely to occur.

Contributor guide

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First steps

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  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
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Research direction

Start by reviewing the WASI workdir and initial CWD behavior described in the issue, including wasi-libc's current "/" default and Docker's WORKDIR and -workdir conventions. Clarify whether the next WASI should document the existing behavior or define a way to pass an initial directory; done means the expected behavior and any likely change are clearly stated.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
docker, wasm
Domain
documentation, operating-systems
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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