2afaac5181
* Return `anyhow::Error` from host functions instead of `Trap` This commit refactors how errors are modeled when returned from host functions and additionally refactors how custom errors work with `Trap`. At a high level functions in Wasmtime that previously worked with `Result<T, Trap>` now work with `Result<T>` instead where the error is `anyhow::Error`. This includes functions such as: * Host-defined functions in a `Linker<T>` * `TypedFunc::call` * Host-related callbacks like call hooks Errors are now modeled primarily as `anyhow::Error` throughout Wasmtime. This subsequently removes the need for `Trap` to have the ability to represent all host-defined errors as it previously did. Consequently the `From` implementations for any error into a `Trap` have been removed here and the only embedder-defined way to create a `Trap` is to use `Trap::new` with a custom string. After this commit the distinction between a `Trap` and a host error is the wasm backtrace that it contains. Previously all errors in host functions would flow through a `Trap` and get a wasm backtrace attached to them, but now this only happens if a `Trap` itself is created meaning that arbitrary host-defined errors flowing from a host import to the other side won't get backtraces attached. Some internals of Wasmtime itself were updated or preserved to use `Trap::new` to capture a backtrace where it seemed useful, such as when fuel runs out. The main motivation for this commit is that it now enables hosts to thread a concrete error type from a host function all the way through to where a wasm function was invoked. Previously this could not be done since the host error was wrapped in a `Trap` that didn't provide the ability to get at the internals. A consequence of this commit is that when a host error is returned that isn't a `Trap` we'll capture a backtrace and then won't have a `Trap` to attach it to. To avoid losing the contextual information this commit uses the `Error::context` method to attach the backtrace as contextual information to ensure that the backtrace is itself not lost. This is a breaking change for likely all users of Wasmtime, but it's hoped to be a relatively minor change to workaround. Most use cases can likely change `-> Result<T, Trap>` to `-> Result<T>` and otherwise explicit creation of a `Trap` is largely no longer necessary. * Fix some doc links * add some tests and make a backtrace type public (#55) * Trap: avoid a trailing newline in the Display impl which in turn ends up with three newlines between the end of the backtrace and the `Caused by` in the anyhow Debug impl * make BacktraceContext pub, and add tests showing downcasting behavior of anyhow::Error to traps or backtraces * Remove now-unnecesary `Trap` downcasts in `Linker::module` * Fix test output expectations * Remove `Trap::i32_exit` This commit removes special-handling in the `wasmtime::Trap` type for the i32 exit code required by WASI. This is now instead modeled as a specific `I32Exit` error type in the `wasmtime-wasi` crate which is returned by the `proc_exit` hostcall. Embedders which previously tested for i32 exits now downcast to the `I32Exit` value. * Remove the `Trap::new` constructor This commit removes the ability to create a trap with an arbitrary error message. The purpose of this commit is to continue the prior trend of leaning into the `anyhow::Error` type instead of trying to recreate it with `Trap`. A subsequent simplification to `Trap` after this commit is that `Trap` will simply be an `enum` of trap codes with no extra information. This commit is doubly-motivated by the desire to always use the new `BacktraceContext` type instead of sometimes using that and sometimes using `Trap`. Most of the changes here were around updating `Trap::new` calls to `bail!` calls instead. Tests which assert particular error messages additionally often needed to use the `:?` formatter instead of the `{}` formatter because the prior formats the whole `anyhow::Error` and the latter only formats the top-most error, which now contains the backtrace. * Merge `Trap` and `TrapCode` With prior refactorings there's no more need for `Trap` to be opaque or otherwise contain a backtrace. This commit parse down `Trap` to simply an `enum` which was the old `TrapCode`. All various tests and such were updated to handle this. The main consequence of this commit is that all errors have a `BacktraceContext` context attached to them. This unfortunately means that the backtrace is printed first before the error message or trap code, but given all the prior simplifications that seems worth it at this time. * Rename `BacktraceContext` to `WasmBacktrace` This feels like a better name given how this has turned out, and additionally this commit removes having both `WasmBacktrace` and `BacktraceContext`. * Soup up documentation for errors and traps * Fix build of the C API Co-authored-by: Pat Hickey <pat@moreproductive.org>
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 and various extensions like SIMD), although it needs to be used within an external WebAssembly embedding such as Wasmtime to be part of a complete WebAssembly implementation. It is also usable as a backend for non-WebAssembly use cases: for example, there is an effort to build a Rust compiler backend using Cranelift.
Cranelift is production-ready, and is used in production in several places, all within the context of Wasmtime. It is carefully fuzzed as part of Wasmtime with differential comparison against V8 and the executable Wasm spec, and the register allocator is separately fuzzed with symbolic verification. There is an active effort to formally verify Cranelift's instruction-selection backends. We take security seriously and have a security policy as a part of Bytecode Alliance.
Cranelift has three backends: x86-64, aarch64 (aka ARM64), and s390x (aka IBM Z). All three backends fully support enough functionality for Wasm MVP, and x86-64 and aarch64 fully support SIMD as well. On x86-64, Cranelift supports both the System V AMD64 ABI calling convention used on many platforms and the Windows x64 calling convention. On aarch64, Cranelift supports the standard Linux calling convention and also has specific support for macOS (i.e., M1 / Apple Silicon).
Cranelift's code quality is within range of competitiveness to browser JIT engines' optimizing tiers. A recent paper includes third-party benchmarks of Cranelift, driven by Wasmtime, against V8 and an LLVM-based Wasm engine, WAVM (Fig 22). The speed of Cranelift's generated code is ~2% slower than that of V8 (TurboFan), and ~14% slower than WAVM (LLVM). Its compilation speed, in the same paper, is measured as approximately an order of magnitude faster than WAVM (LLVM). We continue to work to improve both measures.
The core codegen crates have minimal dependencies and are carefully written to handle malicious or arbitrary compiler input: in particular, they do not use callstack recursion.
Cranelift performs some basic mitigations for Spectre attacks on heap bounds checks, table bounds checks, and indirect branch bounds checks; see #1032 for more.
Cranelift's APIs are not yet considered stable, though we do follow semantic-versioning (semver) with minor-version patch releases.
Cranelift generally requires the latest stable Rust to build as a policy, and is tested as such, but we can incorporate fixes for compilation with older Rust versions on a best-effort basis.
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 were:
- Wasmtime non-Web wasm engine.
- Debug build backend for the Rust compiler.
- WebAssembly compiler for the SpiderMonkey engine in Firefox (currently not planned anymore; SpiderMonkey team may re-assess in the future).
- Backend for the IonMonkey JavaScript JIT compiler in Firefox (currently not planned anymore; SpiderMonkey team may re-assess in the future).
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.
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: