Binaryen is a compiler and toolchain infrastructure library for WebAssembly, written in C++. It aims to make compiling to WebAssembly easy, fast, and effective. Binaryen has a simple C API in a single header, and can also be used from JavaScript. It accepts input in WebAssembly-like form but also accepts a general control flow graph for compilers that prefer that. Binaryen's internal IR uses compact data structures and is designed for completely parallel codegen and optimization, using all available CPU cores. Binaryen's IR also compiles down to WebAssembly extremely easily and quickly because it is essentially a subset of WebAssembly. Binaryen's optimizer has many passes (see an overview later down) that can improve code size and speed. These optimizations aim to make Binaryen powerful enough to be used as a compiler backend by itself.
Features
- Parse and emit WebAssembly
- Interpret WebAssembly as well as run the WebAssembly spec tests
- Integrate with Emscripten in order to provide a complete compiler toolchain from C and C++ to WebAssembly
- Polyfill WebAssembly by running it in the interpreter compiled to JavaScript
- Flexible and fast for optimization
- Binaryen's internal IR uses compact data structures and is designed for completely parallel codegen and optimization