|
* Split front- and back-ends
This change is a major refactor of several of the types that provide the behind-the-scenes implementation of the public C API.
The goal of this refactor is primarily to allow for future API services that let the user operate both the front- and back-ends of the compiler in a more complex fashion.
For example, as user should be able to compile a bunch of source code into modules, look up types, functions, etc. in those modules, specialize generic types/functions to the types they've looked up, and then finally request target code to be gernerated for specialized entry points.
The back-end code generation they trigger should re-use the front-end compilation work (parsing, semantic checking, IR generation) that was already performed.
The most visible change is that `CompileRequest` has been split up into several smaller types that take responsibility for parts of what it did:
* The `Linkage` type owns the storage for `import`ed modules, and well as the `TargetRequest`s that represent code-generation targets. The intention is that an application could use a single `Linkage` for the duration of its runtime (so long as it was okay with the memory usage), so that each `import`ed module only gets loaded once. For now, this type needs to manage the search paths, file system, and source manager, because of its responsibility for loading files.
* A `FrontEndCompileRequest` owns the stuff related to parsing, semantic checking, and initial IR generation. This most notably includes the `TranslationUnitRequest`s and the `FrontEndEntryPointRequest`s (which used to be just `EntryPointRequest`s). It's main job is to produce AST and IR modules for each translation unit, and to find and validate the entry points. The front-end request does *not* interact with generic arguments for global or entry-point generic parameters.
* The main output of both `import` operations and front-end translation units is the `Module` type, which is just a simple container for both the AST module (to service the reflection/layout APIs, and also for semantic checking of code that `import`s the module) and the IR module (for linking and code generation). This type captures the commonalities between the old `LoadedModule` (which is now just an alias for `Module`) and `TranslationUnitRequest` (which now owns a `Module`).
* The secondary output of front-end compilation is a `Program`, which comprises a list of referenced `Module`s and validated `EntryPoint`s that will be used together. Layout and code generation both need a `Program` to tell them what modules and entry points will be used together (we don't want to just code-gen everythin that has ever been loaded into the linakge). The `Program`s created by the front-end do not include generic arguments, so they may provide incomplete layout information and/or be unsuitable for code generation.
* A `BackEndCompileRequest` owns stuff related to turning a `Program` into output kernels for the targets of a `Linkage`. Most of the data it owns beyond the `Program` to be compiled is minor, so this is a good candidate for demotion from a heap-allocated object to just a `struct` of options that gets passed around.
* The `CompileRequestBase` type is an attempt to wrap up the common functionality of both front-end and back-end compile requests. Most of it is just exposing the availability of a linkage and `DiagnosticSink`, so this type is a good candidate for subsequent removal. The main interesting thing it has is the flags related to dumping and validation of IR, so there is probably a good refactoring still to be made around deciding how options should be handled going forward.
* Behind the scenes, the `Program` type is set up to handle some level of on-line compilation and layout work. The `Program` knows the `Linkage` it belongs to, and allows for a `TargetProgram` to be looked up based on a specific `TargetRequest`. A `TargetProgram` then allows layout information and compiled kernel code to be asked for on-demand, in order to support eventual "live" compilation scenarios.
* The `EndToEndCompileRequest` type is a composition/coordination type that replaces the old `CompileRequest` in a way that uses the services of the various other types. It owns a few pieces of state that only make sense in the context of an end-to-end compile (e.g., there is really no way to "pass through" code when the front- and back-ends are run separately) or a command-line compile (everything to do with specifying output paths for files is really just for the benefit of `slangc`, and might even be moved there over time).
* One important detail is that the `EndToEndCompilRequest` owns all of the string-based generic arguments for both global and entry-point generic parameters. The logic in `check.cpp` for dealing with those arguments has been heavily refactored to separate out the parsings steps that are specific to end-to-end compilation with string-based type arguments, and the semantic checking steps that result in a specialized `Program` (which can be exposed through new APIs that aren't tied to end-to-end compilation).
It is perhaps not surprising that this change had a lot of consequences, so I'll briefly run over some of the main categories of changes required:
* I changed the way that global generic arguments are passed via API (use `spSetGlobalGenericArgs` instead of the generic arguments for `spAddEntryPointEx`, which are not just for entry-point generics), which has been a change that we've needed for a long time. This is technically a breaking API change, although we should have very few client applications that care about it.
* A bunch of places that used to take "big" objects like `CompileRequest` now just take the sub-pieces they care about (e.g., a function might have only needed a `Linkage` and a `DiagnosticSink`). This makes many subroutines or "context" struct types more generally useful, at the cost of taking more parameters.
* In a few cases the conceptually clean separation of the layers breaks down (often for edge-case or compatibility features), and so we may pass along additional objects that are allowed to be null, but are used when present. A big example of this is how the back-end code generation routines accept an `EndToEndCompileRequest` that is optional, and only used to check whether "pass through" compilation is needed. We should probably look into cleaning this kind of logic up over time so that we don't need to violate the apparent separation of phases of compilation.
* In cases where separation of layers was being broken for the sake of GLSL features, I went ahead and ripped them out, since all of that should be dead code anyway.
* In many cases I increased the encapsulation of data in the core types to help track down use sites and make sure they are following invariants better.
* In cases where code was doing, e.g., `context->shared->compileRequest->session->getThing()` I have tried to introduce convenience routines so that the usage site is just `context->getThing()` to improve encapsulation and allow changes to be made more easily going forward.
* The `noteInternalErrorLoc` functionality was moved off of the compile request and into `DiagnosticSink`, since that is the one type you can rely on having around when you want to note an internal error. We may consider going forward if (and how) it should reset the counter used for noting locations on internal errors.
* A few APIs now take `DiagnosticSink*` arguments where they didn't before, and as a result some public APIs need to create `DiagnosticSink`s to pass in, before going ahead and ignoring the messages. In the future there should be variations of these APIs that accept an `ISlangBlob**` parameter for the output.
* fixup: missing include for compilers with accurate template checking (non-VS)
* fixup: review feedback
|
|
The main practical change here is that things that used to be `IRValue`s, like literals, are now being expressed as instructions in the global scope.
In order to validate that things are actually being handled correctly, this change introduces an explicit "validation" pass that can be run on the IR to check for different invariants (although it doesn't check many of the important ones right now). I've left the validation pass turned off by default, but with a command-line flag to enable it. We may want to make it be on by default in debug builds, just to keep us honest. The main invariant for the moment is that when on IR instruction is used as an operand to another, it had better come from the same IR module.
Some of the existing passes were violating this rule, in particular when it came to cloning of witness tables related to global generic parameter substitution. Those features can in theory be handled better now by allowing `specialize` instructions at other scopes, but I didn't want to over-complicate this change, so I make just enough fixes to ensure that these steps always clone witness tables they get from the "symbols" on an IR specialization context. In order for this to work when recursively specializing, I had to ensure that the logic for generic specialization had a notion of a "parent" specialization context that it would fall back to to perform cloning when necessary.
This change keeps the logic that was caching and re-using the instructions for literal values within a module, but adds some logic that isn't really being tested right now for picking the right parent instruction to insert a constant instruction into. This logic doesn't trigger right now because all of the cases we are using it on have zero operands (and so they always get "hoisted" to the global scope), but eventually for things like types we want to be able to support instructions with operands (e.g., `vector<float, 4>`) and handle the case where some of those operands come from different scopes (e.g., when nested inside a generic).
The final change here is mostly cosmetic: the `IRBuilder` is now more abstract about where insertion occurs: it tracks a single `IRParentInst` to insert into, and then an optional `IRInst` to insert before. In the common case, that parent is an `IRBlock`, but it could conceivably also be the global scope, or a witness table, etc. Use sites where we used to change those fields directly now use distinct methods `setInsertInto(parent)` and `setInsertBefore(inst)` which capture the two cases we care about. Accessors are also defined to extract the current block (if the current parent is a block), and the current "function" (global value with code, if the current parent is a global value with code, or a block inside one).
With this work in place, it should be possible for a follow-on change to start putting `specialize` instructions at the global scope and thus clean up some of the on-the-fly specialization work. This work should also help with some of the requirements around a distinct IR-level type system and more explicit generics.
|
