# Deploying Rust and WebAssembly
At this point in time deploying Rust and WebAssembly to the web or other
locations unfortunately isn't a trivial task to do. This page hopes to serve
as documentation for the various known options, and as always PRs are welcome
to update this if it's out of date!
## Bundlers
The default output of `wasm-bindgen` assumes a model where the wasm module
itself is natively an ES module. This model, however, not natively implemented
in any JS implementation at this time. As a result, to consume the default
output of `wasm-bindgen` you will need a bundler of some form.
> **Note**: the choice of this default output was done to reflect the trends of
> the JS ecosystem. While tools other than bundlers don't support wasm files as
> native ES modules today they're all very much likely to in the future!
Currently the only known bundler known to be fully compatible with
`wasm-bindgen` is [webpack]. Most [examples] use webpack, and you can check out
the [hello world example online] to see the details of webpack configuration
necessary.
[webpack]: https://webpack.js.org/
[examples]: ../examples/index.html
[hello world example online]: ../examples/hello-world.html
## Without a Bundler
If you're not using a bundler but you're still running code in a web browser,
`wasm-bindgen` still supports this! For this use case you'll want to use the
`--web` flag. You can check out a [full example][nomex] in the
documentation, but the highlights of this output are:
* When using `wasm-bindgen` directly you'll pass `--web`.
* The output can natively be included on a web page, and doesn't require any
further postprocessing. The output is included as an ES module.
* The `--web` mode is not able to use NPM dependencies.
* You'll want to review the [browser requirements] for `wasm-bindgen` because
no polyfills will be available.
> **Note**: currently `--web` is not supported in `wasm-pack` because it is
> a very recent addition to `wasm-bindgen`, but support will be added soon!
[nomex]: ../examples/without-a-bundler.html
[rfc1]: https://github.com/rustwasm/rfcs/pull/6
[rfc2]: https://github.com/rustwasm/rfcs/pull/8
[browser requirements]: browser-support.html
The `wasm-bindgen` CLI also supports an output mode called `--no-modules` which
is similar to `--web` in that it requires manual initialization of the wasm
and is intended to be included in web pages without any further postprocessing.
See the [without a bundler example][nomex] for some more information about
`--no-modules`, which corresponds to `--target no-modules` in `wasm-pack`.
## Node.js
If you're deploying WebAssembly into Node.js (perhaps as an alternative to a
native module), then you'll want to pass the `--target nodejs` flag to
`wasm-pack` or the `--nodejs` flag to `wasm-bindgen`.
Like the "without a bundler" strategy, this method of deployment does not
require any further postprocessing. The generated JS shims can be `require`'d
just like any other Node module (even the `*_bg` wasm file can be `require`'d
as it has a JS shim generated as well).
Note that this method requires a version of Node.js with WebAssembly support,
which is currently Node 8 and above.
## NPM
If you'd like to deploy compiled WebAssembly to NPM, then the tool for the job
is [`wasm-pack`]. More information on this coming soon!
[`wasm-pack`]: https://rustwasm.github.io/wasm-pack/book/