pluginlab

Command-line interface host for Terminal REPL with plugin system (using WebAssembly Component Model).

The goal of this project is to demonstrate the power of the WebAssembly Component Model, with more than a simple hello world.

It is a basic REPL, with a plugin system where:

• plugins can be written in any language compiling to WebAssembly
• plugins are sandboxed by default
• the REPL logic is written in Rust, it also compiles to WebAssembly

There are two kinds of hosts:

• a CLI host, written in Rust running in a terminal (this crate)
• a web host, written in TypeScript running in a browser (see online demo at topheman.github.io/webassembly-component-model-experiments)

Those hosts then run the same codebase which is compiled to WebAssembly:

• the REPL logic
• the plugins (made a few in rust, C and TypeScript)

Security model: the REPL cli implements a security model inspired by deno:

• --allow-net: allows network access to the plugins, you can specify a list of domains comma separated (by default, no network access is allowed)
• --allow-read: allows read access to the filesystem
• --allow-write: allows write access to the filesystem
• --allow-all: allows all permissions (same as all the flags above), short: -A

Plugins are sandboxed by default - they cannot access the filesystem or network unless explicitly permitted. This allows safe execution of untrusted plugins while maintaining the flexibility to grant specific permissions when needed.

Plugins like ls or cat can interact with the filesystem using the primitives of the languages they are written in.

• on the CLI, a folder from the disk is mounted via the --dir flag
• on the browser, a virtual filesystem is mounted, the I/O operations are forwarded via the @bytecodealliance/preview2-shim/filesystem shim, which shims the wasi:filesystem filesystem interface

More details on the github repo: topheman/webassembly-component-model-experiments.

Install

cargo install pluginlab

Usage

Run the CLI host, loading the latest versions of the plugins from the web (you can also load them from local files).

pluginlab\
  --repl-logic https://topheman.github.io/webassembly-component-model-experiments/plugins/repl_logic_guest.wasm\
  --plugins https://topheman.github.io/webassembly-component-model-experiments/plugins/plugin_greet.wasm\
  --plugins https://topheman.github.io/webassembly-component-model-experiments/plugins/plugin_ls.wasm\
  --plugins https://topheman.github.io/webassembly-component-model-experiments/plugins/plugin_echo.wasm\
  --plugins https://topheman.github.io/webassembly-component-model-experiments/plugins/plugin_weather.wasm\
  --plugins https://topheman.github.io/webassembly-component-model-experiments/plugins/plugin_cat.wasm\
  --plugins https://topheman.github.io/webassembly-component-model-experiments/plugins/plugin-echo-c.wasm\
  --allow-all

Other flags:

• --dir: directory to be preopened (by default, the current directory)
• --allow-net: allows network access to the plugins, you can specify a list of domains comma separated (by default, no network access is allowed)
• --allow-read: allows read access to the filesystem
• --allow-write: allows write access to the filesystem
• --allow-all: allows all permissions (same as all the flags above), short: -A
• --help: displays manual
• --debug: run the host in debug mode (by default, the host runs in release mode)

repl(0)> echo $FOO toto repl(0)> greet $FOO Hello, toto! repl(0)> ls wit wit/host-api.wit wit/plugin-api.wit wit/shared.wit repl(0)> weather Paris Sunny repl(0)> weather New York Partly cloudy repl(0)> azertyuiop Unknown command: azertyuiop. Try help to see available commands. repl(1)> echo $? 1 repl(0)> greet $USER Hello, Tophe! repl(0)> echo $0 Hello, Tophe! repl(0)>

Versioning

The plugins are also versioned in github releases, you can use them if you want to use an old version of the plugins.