\[ [Using](using.html) - [Building](building.html) - [🦋](perl6.html) - Notes - [Legal](legal.html) - [Wiki](https://github.com/haukex/webperl/wiki) \] Misc. Notes on WebPerl ====================== Links ----- Other places I've written about WebPerl: - [Run Perl 5 in the Browser!](https://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=1220426) - [WebPerl Regex Tester (beta)](https://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=1221705) - [Embedding WebPerl Code Demos into Other Pages](https://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=1223812) - [WebPerl now has Experimental Perl 6 Support!](https://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=1225647) ### Talks - YAPC::EU 2019 (PerlCon) in Rīga - [talk](https://perlcon.eu/talk/40), [slides](https://goo.gl/QPvUb9) ([PDF](HD_WebPerl_Riga_2019_Slides.pdf)), [Video Link](https://youtu.be/tx44bh6lP1Q?t=6786) - Bonus Lightning Talk - [Video Link](https://youtu.be/tenl6JEum5k?t=29642) - German Perl Workshop 2019 in Munich - [talk](http://act.yapc.eu/gpw2019/talk/7616), [slides in English](https://goo.gl/yM6dff) ([PDF](HD_WebPerl_GPW_2019_Slides.pdf)), talk in German 🇩🇪, [Video Link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EI8js5zf_Pw) - YAPC::EU 2018 in Glasgow - [lightning talk](http://act.perlconference.org/tpc-2018-glasgow/talk/7475), [Video Link](https://youtu.be/KrGSg7uVZj0?t=29520) [![DOI 10.5281/zenodo.1400490](https://zenodo.org/badge/DOI/10.5281/zenodo.1400490.svg)](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1400490) ### "In the Press" - WebPerl gets another mention in Will Braswell's talk ["The Perl Family Tree: Discover Your Heritage"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM-KHZJpy84) at The Perl Conference 2019 in Pittsburgh - WebPerl gets a mention in Will Braswell's talk ["Perl 11 - The Future of Saint Larry's Language"](https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/perl11/) at FOSDEM '19 - [Perl Advent Calendar 2018, Day 2](http://www.perladvent.org/2018/2018-12-02.html) (by Mark Fowler) - [Reddit: Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should (2018-10-22)](https://www.reddit.com/r/programmingcirclejerk/comments/9qerw5/your_scientists_were_so_preoccupied_with_whether/) 😉 - [Hacker News (2018-10-21)](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18269071) - [Reddit /r/programming (2018-10-21)](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/9q65tf/run_perl_in_the_browser_with_webperl/) - [Facebook Group "Perl Programmers" (2018-10-20)](https://www.facebook.com/groups/perlprogrammers/permalink/2141844605848316/) - [Reddit /r/perl: WebPerl Regex Tester (2018-09-05)](https://www.reddit.com/r/perl/comments/9d5n77/webperl_regex_tester/) ### Prior Art Several people have built microperl with Emscripten: - Harsha - Shlomi Fish - FUJI Goro TODOs ----- 1. Testing - How to best disable individual tests that we know won't work? (qx etc.) - How to handle the many tests that call an external Perl? - patching t/test.pl's runperl() seems easiest at the moment, and we can use the iframe method from the IDE - Continue work on `WebPerl.t` - More tests for Unicode support (Perl/JS interface, Perl.eval(), plus Emscripten's virtual FS) - Focus on getting the tests running in the browser instead of node.js - How to best package tests? - If possible, a separate bundle, so that it can be loaded optionally and we don't need to rebuild - How does `make test` find and handle all the various modules' `t`s? 2. Misc - Write up a full RPC example - `Future` - Would `Future::AsyncAwait` work in WebPerl? (Or maybe with a JS backend?) - `Future::HTTP` (probably just as a frontend to XHR?) - Improve Perl 6 integration - Build a packaged Rakudo.js ourselves instead of borrowing from - Perhaps get an API change or two into Rakudo.js: `STDOUT` currently gets output with HTML escapes - See also notes in [Perl 6 Support 🦋](perl6.html) - Investigate Emscripten's main loop concept for handling nonblocking sockets? - Use Multiplicity for re-starting perl? (Thanks to Nick Clark for the idea) - Add Regex::Debugger into regex tester? (Thanks to Renee for the idea) - Turn some patches from emperl5 into patches for P5P - Submit some patches to Emscripten - - - Would we need to patch Perl's signal functions if Emscripten's stubs weren't noisy? - Add `Perl.Util` functions for making file uploads and downloads easier - Plus an example showing how to use it to run a "legacy" Perl script with inputs and output - There is some potential for restructuring: - `Perl.glue()` and `Perl.dispatch()` could go into `WebPerl.xs` (?) - Parts of `webperl.js` could go into `common_preamble.js` or `WebPerl.xs`, so that `emperl.js` is **runnable on its own in a Web Worker (?)** (see notes in `perlrunner.html` / `e12f1aa25a000`) → this might be interesting for running tests?! - `nodeperl_dev_prerun.js` could probably be merged into that as well - Could put a `WebPerl` stub on CPAN - In theory could write a `WebPerl::Local` that contains the `WebPerl` API, and have various drivers such as `WebPerl::WebDriver` or `WebPerl::JSAny` that runs the code given to WebPerl's `js()`... - Regarding the funky syntax highlighting on GitHub: 3. See Also - - - See also `TODO`s in the source tree by grepping for `TODO` or using the included `findtodo.sh`. SSL --- $ openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout selfsigned.key -out selfsigned.crt ... Common Name (e.g. server FQDN or YOUR name) []: localhost ... $ plackup --enable-ssl --ssl-key-file=selfsigned.key --ssl-cert-file=selfsigned.crt web/webperl.psgi # then go to https://localhost:5000 and accept the certificate warning Possible Improvements --------------------- - More efficient JS/C/Perl glue - Test/Support sockets/WebSockets - for example, can we compile a DBD:: module to connect to a DB on the server? - A RPC module for communicating between client and server Perls - I think it's probably best to not have WebPerl prescribe a specific RPC mechanism, since there's a big variety and many are pretty simple to implement using e.g. jQuery - Support some of the Emscripten C API (like wget?) - Try to shrink the download size more (exclude more modules, ...?) Limitations ----------- - Only works in browsers with WebAssembly support (asm.js requires aligned memory access, and Perl apparently has quite a few places with unaligned access) - 32-bit ints - No `system`, `qx`, `fork`, `kill`, `wait`, `waitpid`, threads, etc. - Theoretically, we could link in BusyBox to get a shell and utilities (??) - (`system` and `qx` support could theoretically be added by patching `pp_system`/`pp_backtick` in `pp_sys.c`) - No signals (except `SIGALRM`) - In the current configuration, `exit` is not supported, and therefore `atexit` handlers aren't supported (see discussion in [Using WebPerl](using.html), and `NO_EXIT_RUNTIME` in the Emscripten documentation - currently it seems to make the most sense to build with `NO_EXIT_RUNTIME=1`) - Static linking, requires rebuild to add modules (Emscripten apparently only supports asm.js dynamic linking when dynamic memory growth is disabled, which is not very useful) Release Checklist ----------------- - Update `Changes.md` with all changes since last release As an example, to list changes since a specific version, excluding the regex tester: $ git log --stat v0.05-beta.. -- . ':!web/regex_tester.html' ':!.gitignore' - Also make sure that the documentation in `using.md` etc. mentions when features were added/deprecated - Update version numbers everywhere; use `grep` to find them, for example: $ grep -Er --exclude-dir=hostperl --exclude-dir=.git --exclude-dir=emperl5 --exclude=emperl.* '0\.[01][0-9]' . $ ( cd emperl5; grep -Er '0\.[01][0-9]' `git diff --numstat --diff-filter=ACMRT v5.28.1 HEAD | cut -f3` ) At a minimum there is: - `web/webperl.js` - `Perl.WebPerlVersion` - `emperl5/ext/WebPerl/lib/WebPerl.pm` - `$VERSION` - `pages/index.md` and `pages/using.md` - download links - Update [Subresource Integrity](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Security/Subresource_Integrity) values as needed, e.g.: $ perl -wMstrict -MDigest::SRI=sri -le 'print sri "SHA-256","web/webperl.js"' - Build and create dist, e.g. `build/build.pl --reconfig --dist=webperl_prebuilt_v0.07-beta` - Test all build results, both from `file://...` and `http://localhost` - Add tags, the `webperl` repo gets an annotated tag such as `v0.07-beta`, and the `emperl5` repo gets an unannotated tag such as `webperl_v0.07-beta`, then `git push --tags` - Create a release on GitHub and upload the `webperl_prebuilt_*.zip` as an asset - Uploading to AWS S3: 1. `for X in emperl.* webperl.js; do gzip -v -9 $X && mv -v $X.gz $X ; done` 2. Upload them with the appropriate `Content-Type` (see e.g. `web/webperl.psgi`) and a `Content-Encoding` of `gzip` - If there was a `pages_for_vX.XX` branch of `gh-pages`, don't forget to merge that *** Copyright (c) 2018 Hauke Daempfling (haukex@zero-g.net) at the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), Berlin, Germany, Please see the ["Legal" page](legal.html) for details. *** You can find the source for this page at