[nijaru]

As others have said, Web assembly is an architecture/target for C, C++, rust, etc. that you compile for, and it will be the same for go.

The link does talk about GC support. It looks like wasm will have one, but go’s will most likely perform better since it is tailored to go. (edit for clarification)

I assume a lot of the planning for this was in the GitHub and mailing list discussions dedicated to go’s wasm support. I’m on mobile but I can link those later.

[swsieber]

I was under the impression that WASM does not have one.

[steveklabnik]

Wasm doesn't have one yet, but it's a future extension to to spec.

You can, of course, compile your GC in today, and it will work. Wasm's integrated support will mean re-using the existing GC, which means smaller code size.

Side note: most people thought this would be a precursor to DOM support, but the new "host bindings" proposal opens up DOM support without needing GC support, and many people believe that now the former will land before the latter.

[k__]

Are GC implementations transparent for the languages?

Can Go simply run with the WASM GC or does it need some specific type of GC?

[steveklabnik]

"the WASM GC" only exists as a proposal, and proposals can change before they land. I don't know enough about it to say, and even if I did, it might be invalid by the time things are actually accepted.

See https://github.com/WebAssembly/gc for the current proposal.

[k__]

Sure.

But one day, when there are implementations, can every language run with the WASM GC?

[pjmlp]

No if you care about performance.

To go the extra mile in GC performance, the compiler and GC implementation have to collaborate, taking advantage of language specific features.

[dragonwriter]

IIRC, WASM doesn't have one and, more importantly, has an architecture which makes implementing one on top of WASM efficiently difficult.