WebAssembly / WebAssembly/component-model

Filling out the WAT inline alias syntax

Open
#351 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

enhancement
Dominant language
WebAssembly
Stars
1.4k
Forks
130
Avg merge
2d 1h
Merged PRs (30d)
15

Description

(Filing this for consideration later in a polish phase before 1.0; I don't expect this is a high priority until then since it's additive and I haven't heard anyone asking for it.)

#276 pointed out that it might be nice for the inline alias syntax to be co-expressive with out-of-line aliases and, as part of what this syntax would look like, that we don't necessarily need explicit export or outer tokens to discriminate the two cases (b/c they are lexically distinct).

Thus, a complete set of inline alias syntaxes could be:

(sort 1 2)    ~> (alias outer 1 2 (sort))
(sort $C 2)   ~> (alias outer $C 2 (sort))
(sort 1 $f)   ~> (alias outer 1 $f (sort))
(sort $f)     ~> (alias outer $f (sort))
(sort $C "e") ~> (alias export $C "e" (sort))
(sort 1 "e")  ~> (alias export 1 "e" (sort))

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reading issue #276 and comparing the existing inline and out-of-line alias syntax. Determine how the proposed complete set of inline forms should fit the specification, and consider the work done when the syntax and its intended interpretation are agreed and documented.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
wasm
Domain
compilers
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.