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Alon Zakai edited this page Jun 30, 2014 · 271 revisions

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Emscripten is an LLVM to JavaScript compiler. It takes LLVM bytecode (which can be generated from C/C++ using Clang, or any other language that can be converted into LLVM bytecode) and compiles that into JavaScript, which can be run on the web (or anywhere else JavaScript can run).

Using Emscripten, you can

  • Compile C and C++ code into JavaScript and run that on the web
  • Run code in languages like Python as well, by compiling CPython from C to JavaScript and interpreting code in that on the web
  • See the FAQ for more details

Ready to get started? Download the SDK (or build from source) and then proceed to the Tutorial!

News

Demos

Games and Game Engines

Name Description Author Submitted Link Source
Unity Demos Angry Bots, Dead Trigger 2 (blogpost) new!
Epic Citadel The full Unreal Engine 3, which was ported in 4 days
Nebula3 The Nebula3 engine
Bullet The Bullet physics engine compiled to JavaScript with convenient automatically-generated bindings (through ammo.js) updated!
Esenthel Engine Live Demo
Quake 3 QuakeJS, a port of ioquake3
Doom The open source Freedoom game assets running on PrBoom, which is based on the open source Doom code
UNIGINE Port of the UNIGINE game engine by ACTISKU
BananaBread Port of Sauerbraten/Cube 2. Project page here.
[Torque 2D Demo] (http://stuff.cuppadev.co.uk/torque2d-web/) An experimental port of the [Torque 2D] (https://github.com/GarageGames/Torque2D/wiki) game engine. [Blogpost] (http://www.cuppadev.co.uk/2013/12/torque2d-in-a-web-browser/)
[Nextris] (http://cheez.lt3.us/) [Blogpost] (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=ac8b82fe4fe042851a596440998648c5&topic=33268.msg885283)
Voxel Invaders Blogpost
Dune II Port of OpenDune, an open source implementation of the classic real-time strategy game Dune II
Me & My Shadow A 2D SDL platform/puzzle game (original here)
Heriswap Port of a match-3 puzzle game
Ceferino Port of a 2D action game (also available here)
SuperTux Port of SuperTux by @forandom
Transport Tycoon Deluxe port of OpenTTD by caiiiycuk
Box2D The Box2D physics engine compiled to JavaScript with convenient automatically-generated bindings (through box2d.js)
Online Freecell solver (Text-based) Port of libfreecell-solver (part of Freecell Solver) to JavaScript, with some jQuery glue
ScummVM ported to HTML5 Demos of Monkey Island 1, Sam & Max, Day of the Tentacle, Indiana Jones and other LucasArts classics in your web browser!
drahtkern tech demo A cross-platform 3D engine techdemo developed by MADE
Open Syobon Action A parody of Super Mario. Original here.
Randomedia Game An endless game with aliens and sheeps. Source code on Github.
Minko Engine A free and open source 3D engine for HTML5, iOS, Android, Windows, Mac and Linux.
Minko - Sponza The famous Sponza 3D model rendered with the Minko Engine.
Minko - Venus de Milo A 3D scan of the Venus de Milo rendered with the Minko Engine.
Recast.js - Port of Recast navigation mesh library

Emulators

Name Description Author Submitted Link Source
JSMESS JavaScript port of the MESS emulator
Classic Mac OS Mac Plus emulator using PCE
[Moonjs] (http://svtsim.com/moonjs/agc.html) Simulator for the [Apollo Guidance Computer] (http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/) (AGC) used in the Apollo Program's lunar missions
JS-VBA-M Port of VBA-M by ILOVEPIE
VICE.js Versatile Commodore Emulator for JavaScript

Application Frameworks

Name Description Author Submitted Link Source
pepper.js Ports of miscellaneous PNaCl apps (earth, voronoi, bullet, etc.)
Qt Ports of various Qt demos

Programming Languages

Name Description Author Submitted Link Source
C/C++ Clang and LLVM
Lua The Lua VM, ported in lua.vm.js updated!
Dao Port of the Dao language
mruby Port of mruby, a lightweight implementation of the Ruby language
Python, Ruby, Lua The popular dynamic languages Python, Ruby and Lua, compiled to JavaScript (Older Python demo )
Perl Port of (micro)perl-5.16.3

Tutorials

Name Description Author Submitted Link Source
Developing a Simple Game of Air Hockey Using C and OpenGL ES 2 for Android, iOS, and the Web This is a set of tutorials that takes a look at a very simple game developed for Android and ports it to the web by using emscripten.

WIP

Name Description Author Submitted Link Source
Cocos2D-X

Utilities

Name Description Author Submitted Link Source
openFrameworks openFrameworks ported via Emscripten new!
Vim.js Vi IMproved
GnuPG The GNU Privacy Guard suite
OpenSCAD Solid 3D CAD Modeller
bardecode ExactImage's barcode scanner
LaTeX and BibTeX Ports of TeX Live's pdflatex and bibtex tools (using [texlive.js] (https://github.com/manuels/texlive.js/))
ctags Port of ctags
gnuplot Port of gnuplot
LLVM IR Compile and run LLVM IR in JS, using compiled parts of LLVM + emscripten
Graphviz Graph visualization software (port is here)
PNG Crush PNG optimizer in a web page
XML schema validation XML validation in pure JS using compiled libxml
hpdf.js Create PDF files in pure JS using compiled libharu
SQLite SQLite compiled to JavaScript with an easy-to-use API (through sql.js)
Text-to-Speech eSpeak, a speech synthesizer, compiled to JavaScript.

Graphics

Name Description Author Submitted Link Source
OpenGL ES 2.0 Gears OpenGL ES 2.0 rendering compiled to WebGL
Ray tracing A simple C++ ray tracer, rendering to a canvas element
Rawson.js An experimental Camera RAW viewer in Javascript, based on an emscripten port of dcraw.c
[Crunch DXT1 Texture Compression] (http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~eparker/files/crunch/more_info.html) Using [Crunch] (https://code.google.com/p/crunch/) to compress DXT1 textures for use in browsers supporting [compressed textures] (http://www.khronos.org/registry/webgl/extensions/WEBGL_compressed_texture_s3tc/). Online [demo page] (http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~eparker/files/crunch/decode_test.html) using library.
Topologic Simple viewer for higher-dimensional geometric primitives and fractals.
Verovio A library for engraving MEI music notation into SVG

Other Examples

Name Description Author Submitted Link Source
zopfli.js Zopfli, slow but smaller zlib/gzip compression
zpipe zlib compiled to JS
zee.js Another port of zlib to JS (focused on compressing/decompressing of gzip files)
lzma.js LZMA ported to JS
sql.js SQLite ported to JS
libtess2.js libtess2 compiled to JavaScript
Projects using asm.js

Technical Documentation

Get in Touch

Bug Reports

You can file issues here on GitHub. If relevant, please supply the original source, the generated .ll, and the generated .js files (in a gist, pastebin, or any other method). It's very helpful to compile with EMCC_DEBUG=1 in the environment, and grab the /tmp/emscripten_temp/emcc-* files (note - you should empty that directory manually before, so it only contains new content), that will include the bytecode, ll, and JS in several stages.

With the new fastcomp LLVM-Backend, emscripten now has three repos: this one for emscripten, one for emscripten's LLVM fork and one for emscripten's clang fork. In general, please file bugs here unless you are sure the bug is specific to one of those. Pull requests of course go to the proper repo.

Contributing

Anyone is welcome to help with Emscripten development. Feel free to get in touch with other community members on IRC or on the mailing list (links above), or through issues here on GitHub.

If you find Emscripten useful and want to help out, a good starting point is to look through the issue tracker here: many issues can be resolved without an in-depth knowledge of compiler internals. And when you help out with those, it leaves more time for the developers that do work on compiler internals to do compiler internal-ey stuff :) so everyone benefits. Also, helping out with issues is a good way to learn more about the project.

If you work on Emscripten itself, check out the Developer's Guide.

Patches should be submitted as pull requests. When submitting patches, please:

  • Add yourself to the AUTHORS file (if you aren't already there). By adding yourself, you agree to license your code under the project's open source licenses (MIT/LLVM).
  • You should run all the automatic tests and make sure they pass (python tests/runner.py). Patches that are simple enough (for example, just add library functions that were not used before) might not need this, but most will. Please mention in the pull request or issue which tests you ran.
  • Please make your pull request to incoming, not master. Code in incoming will have tests run on it, and will later merge to master when they all pass.
  • If you add any new functionality or fix an existing bug, add an automatic test to tests/runner.py.
  • Please do not include merge commits in pull requests; include only commits with the new relevant code.

Code Reviews

Current status: In general, kripken should review pull requests before merging. Exceptions are subprojects that are 'owned' by other people (so they should just push to incoming directly):

  • OpenAL and audio in general: @ehsan
  • embind: @imvu
  • Windows stuff: @juj

Branches of interest

  • master - Always safe to pull from, the test suite always passes on it
  • incoming - Where new code lands before tests have been done
  • llvmsvn - Where work to support a new version of LLVM lands. Activity typically begins near the end of an LLVM 6-month dev cycle. When LLVM launches the new version, we merge this branch to master and incoming, at which point our support officially moves to that new LLVM version (we only support one at a time)

Unit test suite

Emscripten contains a built-in unit testing facility. A server farm performs continuous testing on the codebase on Windows 8, Ubuntu 12.10 and Mac OSX 10.7.4 systems. See the latest build results in real-time at Emscripten buildbot page. The following targets exist:

  • incoming branch: win-emcc-incoming-tests, ubuntu-emcc-incoming-tests, osx-emcc-incoming-tests.
  • master branch: win-emcc-master-tests, ubuntu-emcc-master-tests, osx-emcc-master-tests.
  • The target win-emcc-incoming-code-test tests the compilation and deployment of a few simple WebGL applications.

The unit tests are run immediately after a commit occurs on incoming or master branches. Reports are logged live to IRC at #emscripten on the Mozilla network.

The OSX and Ubuntu buildbots also run the Emscripten benchmarks after the unit tests (The benchmarks are not supported on Windows at the moment, #729).

Not all tests necessarily pass on all platforms even if the buildbots report "green" status. Some long-standing failing tests have been disabled to be able to focus on new regressions better. To track the current state of recognized failing tests, see the Emscripten bug tracker with label tests.