Tarantella Package Manager 💃🕷

Tarantella is a modern package manager for C/C++ WASM apps (main modules) and WASM libraries (side modules) meant to be dynamically linked!

Requirements

• basic-http-server.
• GitHub CLI.
• Emscripten.
• NodeJS.

If you note weird behaviours with tapm, the version of one or more of the requirements might be outdated. I've created and used tapm with the following versions: emcc v2.0.29, basic-http-server v0.8.1, and gh v2.0.0.

Why use Tarantella?

Tarantella makes it easy to start, build, test, and distribute WASM apps and libraries by serving as a wrapper around several fantastic tools.

To start your app, run tapm new "<app_name>" [-s] (the -s makes it a side module). This automatically creates a C (but easily convertible to C++) WASM app with:

• an empty git repo,
• a dependencies folder for all side modules meant to be dynamically linked,
• a releases folder for all your upcoming releases,
• a src folder with a starting main.c file,
• a .gitignore,
• a Makefile to ease compilation, and
• a Tarantella.toml file that contains all of your project's pertinent info.

To build your app, run tapm build. This will use the created Makefile to create a new release in your build directory specified in the Tarantella.toml and Makefile.

WASM main modules initialize with an index.html file. To test your main module on the browser, run tapm run [-p <some_port_>] — this will start a basic-http-server.

For publishing apps, Tarantella depends on GitHub. There are two options:

• If your repository already has a public remote origin hosted on GitHub: Tarantella will simply publish your releases there.
• If your repository does not have a remote origin, or has a private remote origin, or has a remote origin not hosted on GitHub: Tarantella will create a GitHub repository called <app_name>_releases and publish your releases there.

To publish your app, run tapm login to login to GitHub, and tapm publish to create a new release. If you do not have a GitHub account, run: tapm register for more info on how to register for GitHub.

To add dependencies to your app, run tapm add <owner>/<dependency_name> [<version>] and any Tarantella libraries (i.e., published with tapm publish) will be automatically downloaded and added to a list of dependencies that are to be dynamically linked at compilation-time in your Makefile.

Why not use WAPM?

As of now, WAPM only allows distributing .wasm modules. If your WASM app includes something like a JS library that goes alongside it, or you've compiled your dynamic library to a .o file, you are left having to distribute that separetly — that sort of thing can really add complexity to, for example, setting up a WASM app that has several dynamically linked libraries.

Install

cargo install tarantella

Usage

tapm is a modern package manager for C/C++ WASM apps.

USAGE:
    tapm <SUBCOMMAND>

FLAGS:
    -h, --help       Prints help information
    -V, --version    Prints version information

SUBCOMMANDS:
    add         Add a new dependency to your wasm app (e.g., tapm add "danbugs/dancing_web" ["0.2.0"])
    build       Build your wasm app
    help        Prints this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)
    login       Login to GitHub to publish your wasm app with Tarantella
    new         Create a new wasm app (e.g., tapm new "dancing_web" 
[-s])
    publish     Publish a new release of your wasm app to GitHub with Tarantella (if your code is private, your
                release will be published to a separate repo)       
    register    Register to GitHub to publish your wasm app with Tarantella
    run         Start an HTTP server to test your main module (e.g., tapm run [-p 8000])

For more info on subcommands, run: tapm <subcommand> --help.

Roadmap

Check out Tarantella's GitHub project board for a view of implemented subcommands here.

Disclaimer

This package manager is new and definitely not free of bugs. However, this is a project I care about so I'll do my best to fix any issues you encounter while using tapm. To file a bug, see this.