[josephg]

Yes; it’s particularly bad when you mix languages like this.

I maintain the nodejs foundationdb libraries. Fdb doesn’t have a published wire protocol - bindings are expected to wrap a dynamically linked C library which contains the protocol implementation and net code. And that library is very “clever” - it leans heavily on codegen (via mono) and hand written asm to support a high performance actor model internally. The downstream effect is that FreeBSD support for database clients has only been added recently. There’s no native Apple M1 client support. There’s been issues with code signing in Java ... and so on. Generally you can only talk to a foundationdb server from an x86_64 client that runs Linux/macos/windows. Which is arbitrary and frustrating.

I hope wasm/wasi eventually becomes the standard for libraries like this. Then the binaries/packages we distribute can work in different languages, different OSes and different architectures without needing all this drama. Wasm bundles fit perfectly in pip/npm/etc. Write them in any language you want and they run fast & run everywhere.