By default, exception catching is disabled in Emscripten. For example, if you compile the following program:
#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
try {
puts("throw...");
throw 1;
puts("(never reached)");
} catch(...) {
puts("catch!");
}
return 0;
}
The first throw
will abort the program and you’ll see something like this in
the output:
throw...
Aborted(Assertion failed: Exception thrown, but exception catching is not enabled. Compile with -sNO_DISABLE_EXCEPTION_CATCHING or -sEXCEPTION_CATCHING_ALLOWED=[..] to catch.)
If you want to opt-in, you have two following options.
First, you can enable exceptions via Emscripten’s JavaScript-based support. To
enable it, pass -fexceptions
at both compile time and link time.
When you rebuild the example above with this flag, the output will change to:
throw...
catch!
Note that this option has relatively high overhead, but it will work on all
JavaScript engines with WebAssembly support. You can reduce the overhead by
specifying a list of allowed functions in which exceptions are enabled, see the
EXCEPTION_CATCHING_ALLOWED
setting.
Alternatively, you can opt-in to the native WebAssembly exception handling
proposal. To enable it, pass -fwasm-exceptions
at both compile time and link
time.
Rebuilding the example with this flag will result in the same output as with
-fexceptions
above:
throw...
catch!
This option leverages a new feature that brings built-in instructions for throwing and catching exceptions to WebAssembly. As a result, it can reduce code size and performance overhead compared to the JavaScript-based implementation. This option is currently supported in several major web browsers, but may not be supported in all WebAssembly engines yet.
For native Wasm exceptions, when ASSERTIONS is enabled, uncaught exceptions will print stack traces
for debugging. ASSERTIONS is enabled by default
in -O0 and disabled in optimized builds (-O1
and above). You can enable it by passing -sASSERTIONS
to the emcc
command line in optimized builds as well. To display Wasm function names in
stack traces, you also need –profiling-funcs
(or -g or -gsource-map).
In JavaScript, you can also examine the stack traces using WebAssembly.Exception.prototype.stack property. For example:
try {
... // some code that calls WebAssembly
} catch (e) {
// Do something with e.stack
console.log(e.stack);
}
Stack traces within Wasm code are not supported in JavaScript-based exceptions.
You can also catch and examine the type and the message of C++ exceptions from
JavaScript, in case they inherit from std::exception
and thus have what
method.
getExceptionMessage
returns a list of two strings: [type, message]
. the
message
is the result of calling what
method in case the exception is a
subclass of std::exception
. Otherwise it will be just an empty string.
var sp = stackSave();
try {
... // some code that calls WebAssembly
} catch (e) {
stackRestore(sp);
console.log(getExceptionMessage(e).toString());
} finally {
...
}
In case the thrown value is an integer 3, this will print int,
, because the
message part is empty. If the thrown value is an instance of MyException
that is a subclass of std::exception
and its what
message is My
exception thrown
, this code will print MyException,My exception thrown
.
To use this function, you need to pass -sEXPORT_EXCEPTION_HANDLING_HELPERS
to the options. You need to enable either of Emscripten EH or Wasm EH to use
this option.
If the stack pointer has been moved due to stack allocations within the Wasm
function before an exception is thrown, you can use stackSave()
and
stackRestore()
to restore the stack pointer so that no stack memory is
leaked.
备注
If you catch a Wasm exception and do not rethrow it, you need to free
the storage associated with the exception in JS using
decrementExceptionRefcount
method because the exception
catching code in Wasm does not have a chance to free it. But currently due to
an implementation issue that Wasm EH and Emscripten (JS-based) EH, you need
to call incrementExceptionRefcount additionally in case of Emscripten EH. See
https://github.com/emscripten-core/emscripten/issues/17115 for details and a
code example.