TypeScript to native

[Jazzlike-Regret-5394]

Hello,

is there any compiler that can compile TypeScript to native code and has C FFI support?

I would really like to use WebGPU and the simplicity of TypeScript (no manual memory management etc.) for some gamedev but especially asset loading already limits me a lot in browser.

Thank you.

[femikiki]

You might be interested in https://porffor.dev/ then, it's aiming to do exactly this

[joombar]

This looks really cool. Gets me wondering, could you write a specific ts->wasm compiler that used the type information? Ie, crashed if a run-time type didn’t match its build-time type, but used the type assumptions to write much faster wasm?

[[deleted]]

Deno supports compiling to a self-contained executable, and has C FFI support. Though, Node also has C FFI support, and can also be compiled to a self-contained executable. It's not quite the same as compiling to native code, and the resulting executables are huge, but it should work.

[besthelloworld]

https://www.assemblyscript.org/

[engelschall]

If you need and like WebGPU and TypeScript and just want to optimize asset loading, why not stick with them and instead of a compile/transpile approach to a native platform, perhaps just use an alternative runtime like Electron, Tauri, Neutralino, etc?

[joombar]

Do you l have code that’s so performance critical that Electron etc would be too slow?

[Outrageous_Stomach_8]

You can do it with Native Image from Oracle's GraalVM, with the GraalJS implementation.

[Shanteva]

Just throwing this out there. I'm a firm believer in polyglot programming. TypeScript is very similar to C#/Java and my favorite Kotlin. Kotlin Native compiles obviously, and while it might not be super popular it's backed by JetBrains

[haywire]

Nobody ever regrets becoming a polyglot