Previously, various doc comments heavily disagreed with the
implementation on both what lives where on the filesystem at what time,
and how that was represented in code. Notably, the combination of emit
paths outside the cache and `disable_lld_caching` created a kind of
ad-hoc "cache disable" mechanism -- which didn't actually *work* very
well, 'most everything still ended up in this cache. There was also a
long-standing issue where building using the LLVM backend would put a
random object file in your cwd.
This commit reworks how emit paths are specified in
`Compilation.CreateOptions`, how they are represented internally, and
how the cache usage is specified.
There are now 3 options for `Compilation.CacheMode`:
* `.none`: do not use the cache. The paths we have to emit to are
relative to the compiler cwd (they're either user-specified, or
defaults inferred from the root name). If we create any temporary
files (e.g. the ZCU object when using the LLVM backend) they are
emitted to a directory in `local_cache/tmp/`, which is deleted once
the update finishes.
* `.whole`: cache the compilation based on all inputs, including file
contents. All emit paths are computed by the compiler (and will be
stored as relative to the local cache directory); it is a CLI error to
specify an explicit emit path. Artifacts (including temporary files)
are written to a directory under `local_cache/tmp/`, which is later
renamed to an appropriate `local_cache/o/`. The caller (who is using
`--listen`; e.g. the build system) learns the name of this directory,
and can get the artifacts from it.
* `.incremental`: similar to `.whole`, but Zig source file contents, and
anything else which incremental compilation can handle changes for, is
not included in the cache manifest. We don't need to do the dance
where the output directory is initially in `tmp/`, because our digest
is computed entirely from CLI inputs.
To be clear, the difference between `CacheMode.whole` and
`CacheMode.incremental` is unchanged. `CacheMode.none` is new
(previously it was sort of poorly imitated with `CacheMode.whole`). The
defined behavior for temporary/intermediate files is new.
`.none` is used for direct CLI invocations like `zig build-exe foo.zig`.
The other cache modes are reserved for `--listen`, and the cache mode in
use is currently just based on the presence of the `-fincremental` flag.
There are two cases in which `CacheMode.whole` is used despite there
being no `--listen` flag: `zig test` and `zig run`. Unless an explicit
`-femit-bin=xxx` argument is passed on the CLI, these subcommands will
use `CacheMode.whole`, so that they can put the output somewhere without
polluting the cwd (plus, caching is potentially more useful for direct
usage of these subcommands).
Users of `--listen` (such as the build system) can now use
`std.zig.EmitArtifact.cacheName` to find out what an output will be
named. This avoids having to synchronize logic between the compiler and
all users of `--listen`.
The idea here is that instead of the linker calling into codegen,
instead codegen should run before we touch the linker, and after MIR is
produced, it is sent to the linker. Aside from simplifying the call
graph (by preventing N linkers from each calling into M codegen
backends!), this has the huge benefit that it is possible to
parallellize codegen separately from linking. The threading model can
look like this:
* 1 semantic analysis thread, which generates AIR
* N codegen threads, which process AIR into MIR
* 1 linker thread, which emits MIR to the binary
The codegen threads are also responsible for `Air.Legalize` and
`Air.Liveness`; it's more efficient to do this work here instead of
blocking the main thread for this trivially parallel task.
I have repurposed the `Zcu.Feature.separate_thread` backend feature to
indicate support for this 1:N:1 threading pattern. This commit makes the
C backend support this feature, since it was relatively easy to divorce
from `link.C`: it just required eliminating some shared buffers. Other
backends don't currently support this feature. In fact, they don't even
compile -- the next few commits will fix them back up.
Similar to the previous commit, this commit untangles LLD integration
from the self-hosted linkers. Despite the big network of functions which
were involved, it turns out what was going on here is quite simple. The
LLD linking logic is actually very self-contained; it requires a few
flags from the `link.File.OpenOptions`, but that's really about it. We
don't need any of the mutable state on `Elf`/`Coff`/`Wasm`, for
instance. There was some legacy code trying to handle support for using
self-hosted codegen with LLD, but that's not a supported use case, so
I've just stripped it out.
For now, I've just pasted the logic for linking the 3 targets we
currently support using LLD for into this new linker implementation,
`link.Lld`; however, it's almost certainly possible to combine some of
the logic and simplify this file a bit. But to be honest, it's not
actually that bad right now.
This commit ends up eliminating the distinction between `flush` and
`flushZcu` (formerly `flushModule`) in linkers, where the latter
previously meant something along the lines of "flush, but if you're
going to be linking with LLD, just flush the ZCU object file, don't
actually link"?. The distinction here doesn't seem like it was properly
defined, and most linkers seem to treat them as essentially identical
anyway. Regardless, all calls to `flushZcu` are gone now, so it's
deleted -- one `flush` to rule them all!
The end result of this commit and the preceding one is that LLVM and LLD
fit into the pipeline much more sanely:
* If we're using LLVM for the ZCU, that state is on `zcu.llvm_object`
* If we're using LLD to link, then the `link.File` is a `link.Lld`
* Calls to "ZCU link functions" (e.g. `updateNav`) lower to calls to the
LLVM object if it's available, or otherwise to the `link.File` if it's
available (neither is available under `-fno-emit-bin`)
* After everything is done, linking is finalized by calling `flush` on
the `link.File`; for `link.Lld` this invokes LLD, for other linkers it
flushes self-hosted linker state
There's one messy thing remaining, and that's how self-hosted function
codegen in a ZCU works; right now, we process AIR with a call sequence
something like this:
* `link.doTask`
* `Zcu.PerThread.linkerUpdateFunc`
* `link.File.updateFunc`
* `link.Elf.updateFunc`
* `link.Elf.ZigObject.updateFunc`
* `codegen.generateFunction`
* `arch.x86_64.CodeGen.generate`
So, we start in the linker, take a scenic detour through `Zcu`, go back
to the linker, into its implementation, and then... right back out, into
code which is generic over the linker implementation, and then dispatch
on the *backend* instead! Of course, within `arch.x86_64.CodeGen`, there
are some more places which switch on the `link` implementation being
used. This is all pretty silly... so it shall be my next target.
The main goal of this commit is to make it easier to decouple codegen
from the linkers by being able to do LLVM codegen without going through
the `link.File`; however, this ended up being a nice refactor anyway.
Previously, every linker stored an optional `llvm.Object`, which was
populated when using LLVM for the ZCU *and* linking an output binary;
and `Zcu` also stored an optional `llvm.Object`, which was used only
when we needed LLVM for the ZCU (e.g. for `-femit-llvm-bc`) but were not
emitting a binary.
This situation was incredibly silly. It meant there were N+1 places the
LLVM object might be instead of just 1, and it meant that every linker
had to start a bunch of methods by checking for an LLVM object, and just
dispatching to the corresponding method on *it* instead if it was not
`null`.
Instead, we now always store the LLVM object on the `Zcu` -- which makes
sense, because it corresponds to the object emitted by, well, the Zig
Compilation Unit! The linkers now mostly don't make reference to LLVM.
`Compilation` makes sure to emit the LLVM object if necessary before
calling `flush`, so it is ready for the linker. Also, all of the
`link.File` methods which act on the ZCU -- like `updateNav` -- now
check for the LLVM object in `link.zig` instead of in every single
individual linker implementation. Notably, the change to LLVM emit
improves this rather ludicrous call chain in the `-fllvm -flld` case:
* Compilation.flush
* link.File.flush
* link.Elf.flush
* link.Elf.linkWithLLD
* link.Elf.flushModule
* link.emitLlvmObject
* Compilation.emitLlvmObject
* llvm.Object.emit
Replacing it with this one:
* Compilation.flush
* llvm.Object.emit
...although we do currently still end up in `link.Elf.linkWithLLD` to do
the actual linking. The logic for invoking LLD should probably also be
unified at least somewhat; I haven't done that in this commit.
Each target can opt into different sets of legalize features.
By performing these transformations before liveness, instructions
that become unreferenced will have up-to-date liveness information.
The last Intel Quark MCU was released in 2015. Quark was announced to be EOL in
2019, and stopped shipping entirely in 2022.
The OS tag was only meaningful for Intel's weird fork of Linux 3.8.7 with a
special ABI that differs from the regular i386 System V ABI; beyond that, the
CPU itself is just a plain old P54C (i586). We of course keep support for the
CPU itself, just not Intel's Linux fork.
This lays the groundwork for #2879. This library will be built and linked when a
static libc is going to be linked into the compilation. Currently, that means
musl, wasi-libc, and MinGW-w64. As a demonstration, this commit removes the musl
C code for a few string functions and implements them in libzigc. This means
that those libzigc functions are now load-bearing for musl and wasi-libc.
Note that if a function has an implementation in compiler-rt already, libzigc
should not implement it. Instead, as we recently did for memcpy/memmove, we
should delete the libc copy and rely on the compiler-rt implementation.
I repurposed the existing "universal libc" code to do this. That code hadn't
seen development beyond basic string functions in years, and was only usable-ish
on freestanding. I think that if we want to seriously pursue the idea of Zig
providing a freestanding libc, we should do so only after defining clear goals
(and non-goals) for it. See also #22240 for a similar case.
Functions like isMinGW() and isGnuLibC() have a good reason to exist: They look
at multiple components of the target. But functions like isWasm(), isDarwin(),
isGnu(), etc only exist to save 4-8 characters. I don't think this is a good
enough reason to keep them, especially given that:
* It's not immediately obvious to a reader whether target.isDarwin() means the
same thing as target.os.tag.isDarwin() precisely because isMinGW() and similar
functions *do* look at multiple components.
* It's not clear where we would draw the line. The logical conclusion before
this commit would be to also wrap Arch.isX86(), Os.Tag.isSolarish(),
Abi.isOpenHarmony(), etc... this obviously quickly gets out of hand.
* It's nice to just have a single correct way of doing something.
If this isn't done, LTO can completely miscompile the input bitcode modules for
certain targets where we need to explicitly set these ABIs (because LLVM's
defaults are bad).
Makes linker functions have small error sets, required to report
diagnostics properly rather than having a massive error set that has a
lot of codes.
Other linker implementations are not ported yet.
Also the branch is not passing semantic analysis yet.
The goals of this branch are to:
* compile faster when using the wasm linker and backend
* enable saving compiler state by directly copying in-memory linker
state to disk.
* more efficient compiler memory utilization
* introduce integer type safety to wasm linker code
* generate better WebAssembly code
* fully participate in incremental compilation
* do as much work as possible outside of flush(), while continuing to do
linker garbage collection.
* avoid unnecessary heap allocations
* avoid unnecessary indirect function calls
In order to accomplish this goals, this removes the ZigObject
abstraction, as well as Symbol and Atom. These abstractions resulted
in overly generic code, doing unnecessary work, and needless
complications that simply go away by creating a better in-memory data
model and emitting more things lazily.
For example, this makes wasm codegen emit MIR which is then lowered to
wasm code during linking, with optimal function indexes etc, or
relocations are emitted if outputting an object. Previously, this would
always emit relocations, which are fully unnecessary when emitting an
executable, and required all function calls to use the maximum size LEB
encoding.
This branch introduces the concept of the "prelink" phase which occurs
after all object files have been parsed, but before any Zcu updates are
sent to the linker. This allows the linker to fully parse all objects
into a compact memory model, which is guaranteed to be complete when Zcu
code is generated.
This commit is not a complete implementation of all these goals; it is
not even passing semantic analysis.
This is necessary since isGnuLibC() is true for hurd, so we need to be able to
represent a glibc version for it.
Also add an Os.TaggedVersionRange.gnuLibCVersion() convenience function.
The old isARM() function was a portability trap. With the name it had, it seemed
like the obviously correct function to use, but it didn't include Thumb. In the
vast majority of cases where someone wants to ask "is the target Arm?", Thumb
*should* be included.
There are exactly 3 cases in the codebase where we do actually need to exclude
Thumb, although one of those is in Aro and mirrors a check in Clang that is
itself likely a bug. These rare cases can just add an extra isThumb() check.
Once we upgrade to LLVM 20, these should be lowered verbatim rather than to
simply musl. Similarly, the special case in llvmMachineAbi() should go away.
Primarily, this moves linker input parsing from flush() into the linker
task queue, which is executed simultaneously with the frontend.
I also made it avoid redundantly opening the same archive file N times
for each object file inside. Furthermore, hard code fixed buffer stream
rather than using a generic stream type.
Finally, I fixed the error handling of the Wasm.Archive.parse function.
Please pay attention to this pattern of returning a struct rather than
accepting a mutable struct as an argument. This ensures function-level
atomicity and makes resource management straightforward.
Deletes the file and path fields from Archive and Object.
Removed a well-meaning but ultimately misguided suggestion about how to
think about ZigObject since thinking about it that way has led to
problematic anti-DOD patterns.
By making it a field of link.Elf, it is now accessible without a data
dependency on `files`, fixing a race condition with the codegen thread
and linker thread.
Jacob Young