Experiment compiling ORT to WASM

[tsteenbe]

Compile ORT to WASM using one of the Java to WASM compilers.

Possible benefits:

• According to https://harshal.sheth.io/2022/01/31/webassembly.html, WASM has a fast boot time
• Reduce dependencies, no requirement anymore to have a JVM installed
• Other?

[tsteenbe]

To add to the craziness one can use https://github.com/WebAssembly/wabt/tree/main/wasm2c to compile WASM file to C and then compile the C file to native binaries (exe, dmg, so) ;-)

[sschuberth]

If the goal is to create a native binary, I wonder whether instead of going through

Kotlin Source -> Java Bytecode -> WASM -> C -> native binary

the better / less fragile approach is to go

Kotlin Source -> Graal -> native binary

see #4982. It seems the only blocker is oracle/graal#4265.

[tsteenbe]

Compiling to native not my plan - like we now compile to JARs for JVM we would compile WASM files for WebAssembly VM which could run on a server or in a web browser. Some folks don't like to run JVM so with WebAssembly we would offer them an alternative which is likely more lightweight and possibly faster.

[tsteenbe]

@sschuberth oracle/graal/issues/4265 was closed does it mean we could now release native ORT binaries?

[sschuberth]

We can build ORT native image since quite a while already (I had applied a work-around for oracle/graal#4265), but running it currently crashes (IIRC due to some unconfigured reflection use). But I believe that's something that could be addressed.

[sschuberth]

FYI, starting with Kotlin 1.8.20 beta, there's a new backend to compile Kotlin directly to WASM.