.NET 8 Preview 5: No news on WASI

Published on Wednesday 21 June 2023

After .NET 8 Preview 5 was released this is an update on my previous post on WASI support in .NET 8 Preview 4.

TL;TD: Not much has changed on the surface since .NET Preview 4. This is just an update of the software used: .NET SDK, workload and tools (wasmtime).

The code needed no updates. If you used it before just remove bin and obj folders and do dotnet build followed by dotnet run.

"Stuck" at updating Hello World

To me the next logical experiment would be to create a WASI compliant wasm file exporting a function, e.g. add(a, b) -> a + b, and calling that using wasmtime.

But this functionality is still in the works and being busy at work I haven't had the time to dive deep into the dotnet/runtime codebase.

"Stack": Status

Updated:

Unchanged:

Update on WASI support in .NET

The Youtube video by Steve Sanderson is still the best source of information.

The Github issue in dotnet/runtime repository is still the place for tracking WASI support in the .NET runtime.

The initial prototype was SteveSandersonMS/dotnet-wasi-sdk and this comment by Steve Sanderson confirms that everything has moved to dotnet/runtime.

No updates have been made to the other dotnet/dotnet-wasi-sdk so I still believe that this repository also has been abandoned.

Summary and observations

Nothing new under the sun. Everything written in the Preview 4 post still applies.