d377b665c6
On the build side, this commit introduces two things:
1. The automatic generation of various ISLE definitions for working with
CLIF. Specifically, it generates extern type definitions for clif opcodes and
the clif instruction data `enum`, as well as extractors for matching each clif
instructions. This happens inside the `cranelift-codegen-meta` crate.
2. The compilation of ISLE DSL sources to Rust code, that can be included in the
main `cranelift-codegen` compilation.
Next, this commit introduces the integration glue code required to get
ISLE-generated Rust code hooked up in clif-to-x64 lowering. When lowering a clif
instruction, we first try to use the ISLE code path. If it succeeds, then we are
done lowering this instruction. If it fails, then we proceed along the existing
hand-written code path for lowering.
Finally, this commit ports many lowering rules over from hand-written,
open-coded Rust to ISLE.
In the process of supporting ISLE, this commit also makes the x64 `Inst` capable
of expressing SSA by supporting 3-operand forms for all of the existing
instructions that only have a 2-operand form encoding:
dst = src1 op src2
Rather than only the typical x86-64 2-operand form:
dst = dst op src
This allows `MachInst` to be in SSA form, since `dst` and `src1` are
disentangled.
("3-operand" and "2-operand" are a little bit of a misnomer since not all
operations are binary operations, but we do the same thing for, e.g., unary
operations by disentangling the sole operand from the result.)
There are two motivations for this change:
1. To allow ISLE lowering code to have value-equivalence semantics. We want ISLE
lowering to translate a CLIF expression that evaluates to some value into a
`MachInst` expression that evaluates to the same value. We want both the
lowering itself and the resulting `MachInst` to be pure and referentially
transparent. This is both a nice paradigm for compiler writers that are
authoring and maintaining lowering rules and is a prerequisite to any sort of
formal verification of our lowering rules in the future.
2. Better align `MachInst` with `regalloc2`'s API, which requires that the input
be in SSA form.
Cranelift Code Generator
A Bytecode Alliance project
Cranelift is a low-level retargetable code generator. It translates a target-independent intermediate representation into executable machine code.
For more information, see the documentation.
For an example of how to use the JIT, see the JIT Demo, which implements a toy language.
For an example of how to use Cranelift to run WebAssembly code, see Wasmtime, which implements a standalone, embeddable, VM using Cranelift.
Status
Cranelift currently supports enough functionality to run a wide variety of programs, including all the functionality needed to execute WebAssembly MVP functions, although it needs to be used within an external WebAssembly embedding to be part of a complete WebAssembly implementation.
The x86-64 backend is currently the most complete and stable; other architectures are in various stages of development. Cranelift currently supports both the System V AMD64 ABI calling convention used on many platforms and the Windows x64 calling convention. The performance of code produced by Cranelift is not yet impressive, though we have plans to fix that.
The core codegen crates have minimal dependencies, support no_std mode (see below), and do not require any host floating-point support, and do not use callstack recursion.
Cranelift does not yet perform mitigations for Spectre or related security issues, though it may do so in the future. It does not currently make any security-relevant instruction timing guarantees. It has seen a fair amount of testing and fuzzing, although more work is needed before it would be ready for a production use case.
Cranelift's APIs are not yet stable.
Cranelift currently requires Rust 1.37 or later to build.
Contributing
If you're interested in contributing to Cranelift: thank you! We have a contributing guide which will help you getting involved in the Cranelift project.
Planned uses
Cranelift is designed to be a code generator for WebAssembly, but it is general enough to be useful elsewhere too. The initial planned uses that affected its design are:
- WebAssembly compiler for the SpiderMonkey engine in Firefox.
- Backend for the IonMonkey JavaScript JIT compiler in Firefox.
- Debug build backend for the Rust compiler.
- Wasmtime non-Web wasm engine.
Building Cranelift
Cranelift uses a conventional Cargo build process.
Cranelift consists of a collection of crates, and uses a Cargo
Workspace,
so for some cargo commands, such as cargo test, the --all is needed
to tell cargo to visit all of the crates.
test-all.sh at the top level is a script which runs all the cargo
tests and also performs code format, lint, and documentation checks.
Building with no_std
The following crates support `no_std`, although they do depend on liballoc:
- cranelift-entity
- cranelift-bforest
- cranelift-codegen
- cranelift-frontend
- cranelift-native
- cranelift-wasm
- cranelift-module
- cranelift-preopt
- cranelift
To use no_std mode, disable the std feature and enable the core feature. This currently requires nightly rust.
For example, to build `cranelift-codegen`:
cd cranelift-codegen
cargo build --no-default-features --features core
Or, when using cranelift-codegen as a dependency (in Cargo.toml):
[dependency.cranelift-codegen]
...
default-features = false
features = ["core"]
no_std support is currently "best effort". We won't try to break it, and we'll accept patches fixing problems, however we don't expect all developers to build and test no_std when submitting patches. Accordingly, the ./test-all.sh script does not test no_std.
There is a separate ./test-no_std.sh script that tests the no_std support in packages which support it.
It's important to note that cranelift still needs liballoc to compile. Thus, whatever environment is used must implement an allocator.
Also, to allow the use of HashMaps with no_std, an external crate called hashmap_core is pulled in (via the core feature). This is mostly the same as std::collections::HashMap, except that it doesn't have DOS protection. Just something to think about.
Log configuration
Cranelift uses the log crate to log messages at various levels. It doesn't
specify any maximal logging level, so embedders can choose what it should be;
however, this can have an impact of Cranelift's code size. You can use log
features to reduce the maximum logging level. For instance if you want to limit
the level of logging to warn messages and above in release mode:
[dependency.log]
...
features = ["release_max_level_warn"]
Editor Support
Editor support for working with Cranelift IR (clif) files: