Overview

Emscripten compiles C and C++ to WebAssembly using LLVM and Binaryen. Emscripten output can run on the Web, in Node.js, and in wasm runtimes.

Emscripten provides Web support for popular portable APIs such as OpenGL and SDL2, allowing complex graphical native applications to be ported, such as the Unity game engine and Google Earth. It can probably port your codebase, too!

While Emscripten mostly focuses on compiling C and C++ using Clang, it can be integrated with other LLVM-using compilers (for example, Rust has Emscripten integration, with the wasm32-unknown-emscripten target).

Getting Started

For detailed instructions and tutorials, visit the Emscripten Website.

Installation

There are two primary ways to install Emscripten:

Using the Emscripten SDK (emsdk) (Recommended) The easiest way to get started is by using the Emscripten SDK. Follow the instructions on the downloads page to install it.
From a Git Checkout (Manual Installation) If you have cloned the repository from Git, you can install the dependencies manually and then run the bootstrap script:
```
./bootstrap.py
```
For more details, see the developer guide.

Using the compiler

Run emcc like you would gcc or clang:

$ emcc hello.c -o hello.js
$ node hello.js
Hello, world!

Emscripten will compile your code into a WebAssembly module along with a JavaScript file that can load and run it. You can then run the resulting JavaScript in your browser or under Node.js (or Deno or Bun).

Emscripten can also generate a sample HTML page that then loads the JavaScript:

$ emcc hello.c -o hello.html

You can then serve the generated hello.html using the emrun tool, or a web server of your choosing.

Contributing

For information on how to contribute to the project, see CONTRIBUTING.md and the Contributing section on the website.

License

Emscripten is available under 2 licenses, the MIT license and the University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License.