Files
wasmtime/crates/wasmtime
Alex Crichton 434fbf2b27 Refactor metadata storage in AOT artifacts (#5153)
* Refactor metadata storage in AOT artifacts

This commit is a reorganization of how metadata is stored in Wasmtime's
compiled artifacts. Currently Wasmtime's ELF artifacts have data
appended after them to contain metadata about the `Engine` as well as
type information for the module itself. This extra data at the end of
the file is ignored by ELF-related utilities generally and is assembled
during the module serialization process.

In working on AOT-compiling components, though, I've discovered a number
of issues with this:

* Primarily it's possible to mistakenly change an artifact if it's
  deserialized and then serialized again. This issue is probably
  theoretical but the deserialized artifact records the `Engine`
  configuration at time of creation but when re-serializing that it
  serializes the current `Engine` state, not the original `Engine`
  state.

* Additionally the serialization strategy here is tightly coupled to
  `Module` and its serialization format. While this makes sense it is
  not conducive for future refactorings to use a similar serialization
  format for components. The engine metadata, for example, does not
  necessarily need to be tied up with type information.

* The storage for this extra metadata is a bit wonky by shoving it at
  the end of the ELF file. The original reason for this was to have a
  compiled artifact be multiple objects concatenated with each other to
  support serializing module-linking-using modules. Module linking is no
  longer a thing and I have since decided that for the component model
  all compilation artifacts will go into one object file to assist
  debugability. This means that the extra stick-it-at-the-end is no
  longer necessary.

To solve these issues this commit splits up the
`module/serialization.rs` file in two, mostly moving the logic to
`engine/serialization.rs`. The engine serialization logic now handles
everything related to `Engine` compatibility such as targets, compiler
flags, wasm features, etc. The module serialization logic is now
exclusively interested in type information.

The engine metadata and serialized type information additionally live in
sections of the final file now instead of at the end. This means that
there are three primary `bincode`-encoded sections that are parsed on
deserializing a file:

1. The `Engine`-specific metadata. This will be the same for both
   modules and components.
2. The `CompiledModuleInfo` structure. For core wasm there's just one of
   these but for the component model there will be multiple, one per
   core wasm module.
3. The type information. For core wasm this is a `ModuleTypes` but for a
   component this will be a `ComponentTypes`.

No true functional change is expected from this commit. Binary artifacts
might get inflated by a small handful of bytes due to using ELF sections
to represent this now.

A related change I made during this commit as well was the plumbing of
the `is_branch_protection_enabled` flag. This is technically
`Engine`-level metadata but I didn't want to plumb it all over the place
as was done now, so instead a new section was added to the final binary
just for this bti information. This means that it no longer needs to be
a parameter to `CodeMemory::publish` and additionally is more amenable
to a `Component`-is-just-one-object world where no single module owns
this piece of metadata.

* Exclude some functions in a cranelift-less build
2022-10-29 17:13:32 +00:00
..

wasmtime

A standalone runtime for WebAssembly

A Bytecode Alliance project

About

This crate is the Rust embedding API for the Wasmtime project: a cross-platform engine for running WebAssembly programs. Notable features of Wasmtime are:

  • Fast. Wasmtime is built on the optimizing Cranelift code generator to quickly generate high-quality machine code either at runtime or ahead-of-time. Wasmtime's runtime is also optimized for cases such as efficient instantiation, low-overhead transitions between the embedder and wasm, and scalability of concurrent instances.

  • Secure. Wasmtime's development is strongly focused on the correctness of its implementation with 24/7 fuzzing donated by Google's OSS Fuzz, leveraging Rust's API and runtime safety guarantees, careful design of features and APIs through an RFC process, a security policy in place for when things go wrong, and a release policy for patching older versions as well. We follow best practices for defense-in-depth and known protections and mitigations for issues like Spectre. Finally, we're working to push the state-of-the-art by collaborating with academic researchers to formally verify critical parts of Wasmtime and Cranelift.

  • Configurable. Wastime supports a rich set of APIs and build time configuration to provide many options such as further means of restricting WebAssembly beyond its basic guarantees such as its CPU and Memory consumption. Wasmtime also runs in tiny environments all the way up to massive servers with many concurrent instances.

  • WASI. Wasmtime supports a rich set of APIs for interacting with the host environment through the WASI standard.

  • Standards Compliant. Wasmtime passes the official WebAssembly test suite, implements the official C API of wasm, and implements future proposals to WebAssembly as well. Wasmtime developers are intimately engaged with the WebAssembly standards process all along the way too.

Example

An example of using the Wasmtime embedding API for running a small WebAssembly module might look like:

use anyhow::Result;
use wasmtime::*;

fn main() -> Result<()> {
    // Modules can be compiled through either the text or binary format
    let engine = Engine::default();
    let wat = r#"
        (module
            (import "host" "hello" (func $host_hello (param i32)))

            (func (export "hello")
                i32.const 3
                call $host_hello)
        )
    "#;
    let module = Module::new(&engine, wat)?;

    // Create a `Linker` which will be later used to instantiate this module.
    // Host functionality is defined by name within the `Linker`.
    let mut linker = Linker::new(&engine);
    linker.func_wrap("host", "hello", |caller: Caller<'_, u32>, param: i32| {
        println!("Got {} from WebAssembly", param);
        println!("my host state is: {}", caller.data());
    })?;

    // All wasm objects operate within the context of a "store". Each
    // `Store` has a type parameter to store host-specific data, which in
    // this case we're using `4` for.
    let mut store = Store::new(&engine, 4);
    let instance = linker.instantiate(&mut store, &module)?;
    let hello = instance.get_typed_func::<(), (), _>(&mut store, "hello")?;

    // And finally we can call the wasm!
    hello.call(&mut store, ())?;

    Ok(())
}

More examples and information can be found in the wasmtime crate's online documentation as well.

Documentation

📚 Read the Wasmtime guide here! 📚

The wasmtime guide is the best starting point to learn about what Wasmtime can do for you or help answer your questions about Wasmtime. If you're curious in contributing to Wasmtime, it can also help you do that!