Openbsd C/c++ Toolchain in the Browser

Posted2 months agoActive2 months ago

todsacerdoti

35 points

13 comments

openbsd.llvm.moeTechstory

supportivepositive

Debate

20/100

OpenbsdLlvmWebassemblyC/c++ Toolchain

Key topics

Openbsd

Llvm

Webassembly

C/c++ Toolchain

The story shares a project that brings the OpenBSD C/C++ toolchain to the browser using WebAssembly, sparking discussion around its potential applications and technical achievements.

Snapshot generated from the HN discussion

Discussion Activity

Moderate engagement

First comment

Peak period

72-78h

Avg / period

3.3

Comment distribution13 data points

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Based on 13 loaded comments

Key moments

01Story posted
Oct 24, 2025 at 8:17 AM EDT
2 months ago
Step 01
02First comment
Oct 27, 2025 at 11:30 AM EDT
3d after posting
Step 02
03Peak activity
8 comments in 72-78h
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03
04Latest activity
Oct 28, 2025 at 5:34 AM EDT
2 months ago
Step 04

Generating AI Summary...

Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns

Discussion (13 comments)

Showing 13 comments

exitb

2 months ago

3 replies

A word of warning - this appears to download 350MB right away after you visit.

webdevver

2 months ago

1 reply

it would be good to analyze which of those .text/data sections are actually visited - i recall someone running the Vivado FPGA toolset, that is notoriously massive (90GB+) over a special FUSE fs that tells you which files were accessed, and then stripping out the ones that weren't, leading ot substantial wins.

to be honest, it is surprising that a toolchain could be 350MB - that is a lot of code, if thats what it is.

whitequark_

2 months ago

122 MB of it is Wasm machine code of a MinSizeRel LTO build of LLVM; it is compressed to 23 MB by Zstandard when your HTTP client supports that. That is about as small as you can get an LLVM/Clang/LLD bundle to be, and I put a lot of effort into making it smaller.

248 MB of it is an OpenBSD sysroot; it is compressed to 45 MB by Zstandard when your HTTP client supports that. I have not used OpenBSD and have no particular insight into what's inside.

munchlax

2 months ago

Thanks. That may well be enough to trash firefox all day.

whitequark_

2 months ago

If your browser has Zstandard support, it downloads only 100MB. But yes, this is a proof-of-concept that needs some fixes.

0xWTF

2 months ago

1 reply

> "Reflections on trusting trust"

Obligatory link to the unspecified-at-the-time Air Force critique of Multics with the introduction of a Trojan horse:

https://csrc.nist.gov/files/pubs/conference/1998/10/08/proce...

thw_9a83c

2 months ago

That's a good one from Ken Thomson.

   "The moral is obvious. You can't trust code that you did
   not totally create yourself. (Especially code from com-
   panies that employ people like me.) No amount of
   source-level verification or scrutiny will protect you
   from using untrusted code."

birdalbrocum

2 months ago

1 reply

One of the horrible consequences of the last 20 years of web (there are so many, not sure where to start!) that every person with an access to a computer thinks that they have every right to upload a humongous blob of binary to your computer without needing to ask. Thanks to silicon valley I suppose.

sidkshatriya

2 months ago

2 replies

It’s wasm. If you object to wasm then you should object to javascript, its predecessor

birdalbrocum

2 months ago

I am objecting to JavaScript.

grebc

2 months ago

Can you disable javascript on an iPhone? I certainly use NoScript add-on on my PC’s. Very few domains get the go ahead to run JS for me.

Ericson2314

2 months ago

> I wanted my builds to work with Nix, and the existing cross-compilation infrastructure for OpenBSD didn't seem to work properly on OpenBSD 7.7.

As the main author of that, please talk to me! I just did a hello world build of whatever version we have in there today (7.5). I would be happy to assist with getting 7.7 and 7.8 in.

Also #nix-openbsd:tapenet.org is matrix channel that can be good for this stuff.

pjmlp

2 months ago

This doesn't seem to be properly configured, the following sample fails to compile with missing print header.

   #include <print>

   int main() {
       std::println("Hello HN");
   }

Compiler explorer example with the same major.minor clang version,

https://cpp.godbolt.org/z/q5f78MzbG

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ID: 45693871Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 1:48:02 PM

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