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authorTamar Christina <tamar@zhox.com>2016-04-11 00:38:42 +0200
committerBen Gamari <ben@smart-cactus.org>2016-04-11 01:44:41 +0200
commit90538d86af579595987826cd893828d6f379f35a (patch)
tree263e787c80664e36ac9dbc895ceff71273b1a03f /docs
parent8987ce067d187878f82005293f6b215dec66df48 (diff)
downloadhaskell-90538d86af579595987826cd893828d6f379f35a.tar.gz
Change runtime linker to perform lazy loading of symbols/sections
The Runtime Linker is currently eagerly loading all object files on all platforms which do not use the system linker for `GHCi`. The problem with this approach is that it requires all symbols to be found. Even those of functions never used/called. This makes the number of libraries required to link things like `mingwex` quite high. To work around this the `rts` was relying on a trick. It itself was compiled with `MingW64-w`'s `GCC`. So it was already linked against `mingwex`. As such, it re-exported the symbols from itself. While this worked it made it impossible to link against `mingwex` in user libraries. And with this means no `C99` code could ever run in `GHCi` on Windows without having the required symbols re-exported from the rts. Consequently this rules out a large number of packages on Windows. SDL2, HMatrix etc. After talking with @rwbarton I have taken the approach of loading entire object files when a symbol is needed instead of doing the dependency tracking on a per symbol basis. This is a lot less fragile and a lot less complicated to implement. The changes come down to the following steps: 1) modify the linker to and introduce a new state for ObjectCode: `Needed`. A Needed object is one that is required for the linking to succeed. The initial set consists of all Object files passed as arguments to the link. 2) Change `ObjectCode`'s to be indexed but not initialized or resolved. This means we know where we would load the symbols, but haven't actually done so. 3) Mark any `ObjectCode` belonging to `.o` passed as argument as required: ObjectState `NEEDED`. 4) During `Resolve` object calls, mark all `ObjectCode` containing the required symbols as `NEEDED` 5) During `lookupSymbol` lookups, (which is called from `linkExpr` and `linkDecl` in `GHCI.hs`) is the symbol is in a not-yet-loaded `ObjectCode` then load the `ObjectCode` on demand and return the address of the symbol. Otherwise produce an unresolved symbols error as expected. 6) On `unloadObj` we then change the state of the object and remove it's symbols from the `reqSymHash` table so it can be reloaded. This change affects all platforms and OSes which use the runtime linker. It seems there are no real perf tests for `GHCi`, but performance shouldn't be impacted much. We gain a lot of time not loading all `obj` files, and we lose some time in `lookupSymbol` when we're finding sections that have to be loaded. The actual finding itself is O(1) (Assuming the hashtnl is perfect) It also consumes slighly more memory as instead of storing just the address of a symbol I also store some other information, like if the symbol is weak or not. This change will break any packages relying on renamed POSIX functions that were re-named and re-exported by the rts. Any packages following the proper naming for functions as found on MSDN will work fine. Test Plan: ./validate on all platforms which use the Runtime linker. Reviewers: thomie, rwbarton, simonmar, erikd, bgamari, austin, hvr Reviewed By: erikd Subscribers: kgardas, gridaphobe, RyanGlScott, simonmar, rwbarton, #ghc_windows_task_force Differential Revision: https://phabricator.haskell.org/D1805 GHC Trac Issues: #11223
Diffstat (limited to 'docs')
-rw-r--r--docs/users_guide/8.0.1-notes.rst9
1 files changed, 9 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/docs/users_guide/8.0.1-notes.rst b/docs/users_guide/8.0.1-notes.rst
index 2e22f44e08..d79fdf2a90 100644
--- a/docs/users_guide/8.0.1-notes.rst
+++ b/docs/users_guide/8.0.1-notes.rst
@@ -72,6 +72,9 @@ The highlights, since the 7.10 branch, are:
- Support for Windows XP and earlier has been dropped.
+- GHC RTS No longer re-exports POSIX functions under their deprecated
+ names on Windows.
+
Full details
------------
@@ -458,6 +461,12 @@ Runtime system
choose to use at most ⟨x⟩ capabilities, limited by the number of processors
as :rts-flag:`-N` is.
+- The runtime linker is no longer greedy and will load only the needed objects
+ from archives. This means particularly on Windows packages requiring e.g. C99
+ support will now function properly. As part of this the RTS on Windows
+ no longer re-exports deprecated posix functions under the undeprecated names
+ (see :ghc-ticket:`11223`).
+
Build system
~~~~~~~~~~~~