Experiment with icu4x usage for wasm

[CoffeeFlux]

icu4x is an ICU implementation targeting WebAssembly that is intended to be modular and flexible. There is a chance that it could offer size or performance benefits over icu4c, and as the library matures experimenting with using it could be valuable.

Before attempting to implement this in full, we would need to:

• Identify whether the ICU APIs we call right now are implemented in icu4x or what the gap is (list of functions we use here)
• Call into a Rust library from Mono wasm

Also of note: icu4x is not targeting full no_std compatibility for now, see unicode-org/icu4x#77

[ghost]

Tagging subscribers to this area: @tarekgh, @safern, @krwq
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Issue Details

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icu4x is an ICU implementation targeting WebAssembly that is intended to be modular and flexible. There is a chance that it could offer size or performance benefits over icu4c, and as the library matures experimenting with using it could be valuable.

Before attempting to implement this in full, we would need to:

• Identify the ICU APIs we call right now and ensure they're implemented in icu4x (or open issues as appropriate)
• Try to call into a Rust library from Mono wasm (should be possible, but nontrivial)

Author:	CoffeeFlux
Assignees:	-
Labels:	area-System.Globalization, size-reduction
Milestone:	-

[ghost]

Tagging subscribers to 'arch-wasm': @lewing
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Issue Details

---

icu4x is an ICU implementation targeting WebAssembly that is intended to be modular and flexible. There is a chance that it could offer size or performance benefits over icu4c, and as the library matures experimenting with using it could be valuable.

Before attempting to implement this in full, we would need to:

• Identify the ICU APIs we call right now and ensure they're implemented in icu4x (or open issues as appropriate)
• Try to call into a Rust library from Mono wasm (should be possible, but nontrivial)

Also of note: icu4x is not targeting full no_std compatibility for now, see unicode-org/icu4x#77

Author:	CoffeeFlux
Assignees:	-
Labels:	arch-wasm, area-System.Globalization, size-reduction
Milestone:	Future

[lambdageek]

Since unicode-org/icu4x#911 icu4x builds with no_std. Also they recently hit 1.0.0-beta1 https://crates.io/crates/icu/1.0.0-beta1

It's worth revisiting this

[tarekgh]

@lambdageek yes, it is worth trying in the next cycle.

[naricc]

I plan to take a look at this in the November time frame.

[SamMonoRT]

We are going to consider this as a future project. Closing this issue.