The wasm-feature-detect npm package is designed to help developers detect the availability of various WebAssembly (Wasm) features in the user's environment. This can be particularly useful for ensuring compatibility and optimizing performance by leveraging specific Wasm capabilities when they are available.

What are wasm-feature-detect's main functionalities?

Detect SIMD Support

This feature allows you to detect if SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) is supported in the user's environment. SIMD can significantly improve performance for certain types of computations.

const wasmFeatureDetect = require('wasm-feature-detect');

wasmFeatureDetect.simd().then(supported => {
  if (supported) {
    console.log('SIMD is supported');
  } else {
    console.log('SIMD is not supported');
  }
});

Detect Bulk Memory Operations Support

This feature checks if bulk memory operations are supported. Bulk memory operations can be used to efficiently manage memory in WebAssembly.

const wasmFeatureDetect = require('wasm-feature-detect');

wasmFeatureDetect.bulkMemory().then(supported => {
  if (supported) {
    console.log('Bulk Memory Operations are supported');
  } else {
    console.log('Bulk Memory Operations are not supported');
  }
});

Detect Multi-Value Support

This feature detects if the multi-value extension is supported. Multi-value allows WebAssembly functions to return multiple values, which can simplify certain programming patterns.

const wasmFeatureDetect = require('wasm-feature-detect');

wasmFeatureDetect.multiValue().then(supported => {
  if (supported) {
    console.log('Multi-Value is supported');
  } else {
    console.log('Multi-Value is not supported');
  }
});

Other packages similar to wasm-feature-detect

WebAssembly Feature Detection

A small library to detect which features of WebAssembly are supported.

✅ Runs in browsers, Node and Deno
✅ Tree-shakable (only bundle the detectors you use)
✅ Provided as an ES6, CommonJS and UMD module.
✅ CSP compatible
✅ All detectors add up to only ~980B gzipped

Installation

npm install -g wasm-feature-detect

Usage

<script type="module">
	import { simd } from "wasm-feature-detect";

	if (await simd()) {
		/* SIMD support */
	} else {
		/* No SIMD support */
	}
</script>

Hotlinking from Unpkg

<script type="module">
	import { simd } from "https://unpkg.com/wasm-feature-detect?module";
	// ...
</script>

If required, there’s also a UMD version

<script src="https://unpkg.com/wasm-feature-detect/dist/umd/index.js"></script>
<script>
	if (await wasmFeatureDetect.simd()) {
	  // ...
	}
</script>

Detectors

All detectors return a Promise<bool>.

Function	Proposal
`bigInt()`	BigInt integration
`bulkMemory()`	Bulk memory operations
`exceptions()`	Legacy Exception Handling
`exceptionsFinal()`	Exception Handling with exnref
`extendedConst()`	Extented Const Expressesions
`gc()`	Garbage Collection
`jsStringBuiltins()`	JS String Builtins Proposal for WebAssembly
`jspi()`	JavaScript Promise Integration
`memory64()`	Memory64
`multiMemory()`	Multiple Memories
`multiValue()`	Multi-value
`mutableGlobals()`	Importable/Exportable mutable globals
`referenceTypes()`	Reference Types
`relaxedSimd()`	Relaxed SIMD
`saturatedFloatToInt()`	Non-trapping float-to-int conversions
`signExtensions()`	Sign-extension operators
`simd()`	Fixed-Width SIMD
`streamingCompilation()`	Streaming Compilation
`tailCall()`	Tail call
`threads()`	Threads
`typeReflection()`	Type Reflection
`typedFunctionReferences()`	Typed function references

Why are all the tests async?

The technical reason is that some tests might have to be augmented to be asynchronous in the future. For example, Firefox is planning to make a change that would require a postMessage call to detect SABs, which are required for threads.

The other reason is that you should be using WebAssembly.compile, WebAssembly.instantiate, or their streaming versions WebAssembly.compileStreaming and WebAssembly.instantiateStreaming, which are all asynchronous. You should already be prepared for asynchronous code when using WebAssembly!

Contributing

If you want to contribute a new feature test, all you need to do is create a new folder in src/detectors and it will be automatically picked up. The folder may contain a module.wat file, which will be compiled using wabt.js.

;; Name: <Name of the feature for the README>
;; Proposal: <Link to the proposal’s explainer/repo>
;; Features: <Space-separated list of WasmFeatures from wabt.js>

(module
  ;; More WAT code here
)

The folder can also contain an optional index.js file, whose default export must be an async function. This function can do additional testing in JavaScript and must return a boolean. See the “threads” detector as an example. It must contain at least one of module.wat or index.js.

License Apache-2.0

FAQs

What is wasm-feature-detect?

Is wasm-feature-detect popular?

Is wasm-feature-detect well maintained?

Package last updated on 17 Sep 2024

Did you know?

Socket for GitHub automatically highlights issues in each pull request and monitors the health of all your open source dependencies. Discover the contents of your packages and block harmful activity before you install or update your dependencies.

Install