CopyPlugin on Webpack configuration

[ramonemiliani93]

Hi all, I have a question regarding the configuration of webpack. I was following the example quick start onnxruntime web bundler and wanted to know if someone has an in depth explanation of the following lines:

plugins: [new CopyPlugin({
            // Use copy plugin to copy *.wasm to output folder.
            patterns: [{ from: 'node_modules/onnxruntime-web/dist/*.wasm', to: '[name][ext]' }]
        })],

If that is excluded from the webpack configuration the example does not run and there is an error message no available backend found. Why is it not enough to add onnxruntime-web to the dependencies? Any resource giving more depth on the topic is very much appreciated!

[carzh]

Hi, the "core" ONNXRuntime Inference code is made available on web by compiling them to WebAssembly binaries (.wasm files) -- these wasm files must be made accessible in the browser for the ORT-web package to work. This blog post goes more into detail about WebAssembly & its advantages