Compiling C/C++ to WASM with Emscripten
Set up your environment and compile your first C/C++ program into a WebAssembly module using the Emscripten toolchain.
Meet Emscripten!
Welcome! Today, we'll learn to compile C/C++ code into WebAssembly (WASM). The key tool for this is Emscripten.
Emscripten is a complete toolchain that takes C/C++ code and compiles it into WASM, along with "glue" JavaScript code to help run it in a web browser or Node.js environment.
Bridging C/C++ to WASM
Why Emscripten? Browsers don't understand C/C++ directly. Emscripten acts as a powerful translator.
- It compiles your C/C++ into the efficient WASM binary format.
- It generates JavaScript "glue" code to load the WASM module and interact with it from JavaScript.
- It handles C/C++ standard library functions (like
printf) by providing JavaScript equivalents.
All lessons in this course
- Compiling C/C++ to WASM with Emscripten
- Loading & Running WASM in JavaScript
- Basic Data Exchange: Primitives
- Calling JavaScript Functions from C/C++