Last month a new GCC back-end was proposed for WebAssembly to allow C/C++ code to be compiled to WASM with this GNU compiler toolchain. The GCC Steering Committee has evaluated it and approves the notion of WebAssembly back-end for GCC.

Rather than having to rely on LLVM-based tooling for converting code to WebAssembly, a modern GCC back-end was developed. It's still in early stages of development and not yet feature complete, but at least the concept of WASM back-end support in the GNU Compiler Collection now has the endorsement of the GCC Steering Committee that needs to approve new back-ends.

WebAssembly is the binary instruction format to allow code from C / C++ / Rust to be compiled into it for allowing high performance execution within modern web browsers and other WASM environments in a portal and open standards manner.

Today's announcement on the mailing list explained:

"The GCC Steering Committee has agreed that inclusion of a WebAssembly backend in GCC would be welcome. This serves as approval of the direction and the contribution, not approval of the implementation and the patches themselves. Please work with the GCC Global Reviewers for technical review and approval of the initial patches.

Contributing and maintaining a new GCC backend are a larger responsibility than sending incremental patches to fix bugs or add features. We request that you find another, experienced member of the GCC Community to join you as co-maintainer of the backend. The GCC SC will consider appointing both nominees as maintainers of the backend."

We'll see if this WebAssembly back-end gets into good enough shape over the coming months that the initial support could be found in next year's GCC 17.1 stable compiler release.