mirror
/
rustc-dev-guide
mirror of https://github.com/rust-lang/rustc-dev-guide.git
1
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Packages Projects Releases Wiki Activity

add overview

This commit is contained in:
mark 2020-03-25 23:26:17 -05:00 committed by Who? Me?!
parent 3b6defe682
commit 4272a80c38
2 changed files with 325 additions and 2 deletions
Show Stats Download Patch File Download Diff File Expand all files Collapse all files

1
src/SUMMARY.md
View File

@ -33,7 +33,6 @@
- ["Cleanup Crew" ICE-breakers](ice-breaker/cleanup-crew.md)
- [LLVM ICE-breakers](ice-breaker/llvm.md)
- [Licenses](./licenses.md)
- [Part 2: High-level Compiler Architecture](./part-2-intro.md)
- [Overview of the Compiler](./overview.md)
- [The compiler source code](./compiler-src.md)

326
src/overview.md
View File

@ -1,3 +1,327 @@
# Overview of the Compiler
Coming soon! Work is in progress on this chapter. See https://github.com/rust-lang/rustc-dev-guide/pull/633 for the source and the [project README](https://github.com/rust-lang/rustc-dev-guide) for local build instructions.
This chapter is about the overall process of compiling a program -- how
everything fits together.
The rust compiler is special in two ways: it does things to your code that
other compilers don't do (e.g. borrow checking) and it has a lot of
unconventional implementation choices (e.g. queries). We will talk about these
in turn in this chapter, and in the rest of the guide, we will look at all the
individual pieces in more detail.
## What the compiler does to your code
So first, let's look at what the compiler does to your code. For now, we will
avoid mentioning how the compiler implements these steps except as needed;
we'll talk about that later.
**TODO: Would be great to have a diagram of this once we nail down the details...**
**TODO: someone else should confirm this vvv**
- User writes a program and invokes `rustc` on it (possibly through `cargo`).
- First, we parse command line flags, etc. This is done in [`librustc_driver`].
We now know what the exact work is we need to do (e.g. which nightly features
are enabled, whether we are doing a `check`-only build or emiting LLVM-IR or
a full compilation).
- Then, we start to do compilation...
- We first [_lex_ the user program][lex]. This turns the program into a stream
of _tokens_ (yes, the same sort of tokens as `proc_macros` (sort of)).
[`StringReader`] from [`librustc_parse`] integrates [`librustc_lexer`] with
`rustc` data structures.
- We then [_parse_ the stream of tokens][parser] to build an Abstract Syntax
Tree (AST).
- We then take the AST and [convert it to High-Level Intermediate
Representation (HIR)][hir]. This is a compiler-friendly representation of the
AST. This involves a lot of desugaring of things like loops and `async fn`.
- We use the HIR to do [type inference]. This is the process of automatic
detection of the type of an expression. **TODO: how `ty` module fits in
here**
- **TODO: Maybe some other things are done here? I think initial type checking
happens here? And trait solving?**
- The HIR is then [lowered to Mid-Level Intermediate Representation (MIR)][mir].
- The MIR is used for [borrow checking].
- **TODO: const eval fits in somewhere here I think**
- We (want to) do [many optimizations on the MIR][mir-opt] because it is still
generic and that improves the code we generate later, improving compilation
speed too. (**TODO: size optimizations too?**)
- MIR is a higher level (and generic) representation, so it is easier to do
some optimizations at MIR level than at LLVM-IR level. For example LLVM
doesn't seem to be able to optimize the pattern the [`simplify_try`] mir
opt looks for.
- Rust code is _monomorphized_, which means making copies of all the generic
code with the type parameters replaced by concrete types. In order to do
this, we need to collect a list of what concrete types to generate code for.
This is called _monomorphization collection_.
- We then begin what is vaguely called _code generation_ or _codegen_.
- The [code generation stage (codegen)][codegen] is when higher level
representations of source are turned into an executable binary. `rustc`
uses LLVM for code generation. The first step is the MIR is then
converted to LLVM Intermediate Representation (LLVM IR). This is where
the MIR is actually monomorphized, according to the list we created in
the previous step.
- The LLVM IR is passed to LLVM, which does a lot more optimizations on it.
It then emits machine code. It is basically assembly code with additional
low-level types and annotations added. (e.g. an ELF object or wasm).
**TODO: reference for this section?**
- The different libraries/binaries are linked together to produce the final
binary. **TODO: reference for this section?**
[`librustc_lexer`]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/nightly-rustc/rustc_lexer/index.html
[`librustc_driver`]: https://rust-lang.github.io/rustc-guide/rustc-driver.html
[lex]: https://rust-lang.github.io/rustc-guide/the-parser.html
[`StringReader`]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/nightly-rustc/rustc_parse/lexer/struct.StringReader.html
[`librustc_parse`]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/nightly-rustc/rustc_parse/index.html
[parser]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/nightly-rustc/rustc_lexer/index.html
[hir]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/nightly-rustc/rustc_lexer/index.html
[type inference]: https://rust-lang.github.io/rustc-guide/type-inference.html
[mir]: https://rust-lang.github.io/rustc-guide/mir/index.html
[borrow checker]: https://rust-lang.github.io/rustc-guide/borrow_check.html
[mir-opt]: https://rust-lang.github.io/rustc-guide/mir/optimizations.html
[`simplify_try`]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/66282
[codegen]: https://rust-lang.github.io/rustc-guide/codegen.html
## How it does it
Ok, so now that we have a high-level view of what the compiler does to your
code, let's take a high-level view of _how_ it does all that stuff. There are a
lot of constraints and conflicting goals that the compiler needs to
satisfy/optimize for. For example,
- Compilation speed: how fast is it to compile a program. More/better
compile-time analyses often means compilation is slower.
- Also, we want to support incremental compilation, so we need to take that
into account. How can we keep track of what work needs to be redone and
what can be reused if the user modifies their program?
- Also we can't store too much stuff in the incremental cache because
it would take a long time to load from disk and it could take a lot
of space on the user's system...
- Compiler memory usage: while compiling a program, we don't want to use more
memory than we need.
- Program speed: how fast is your compiled program. More/better compile-time
analyses often means the compiler can do better optimizations.
- Program size: how large is the compiled binary? Similar to the previous
point.
- Compiler compilation speed: how long does it take to compile the compiler?
This impacts contributors and compiler maintenance.
- Compiler implementation complexity: building a compiler is one of the hardest
things a person/group can do, and rust is not a very simple language, so how
do we make the compiler's code base manageable?
- Compiler correctness: the binaries produced by the compiler should do what
the input programs says they do, and should continue to do so despite the
tremendous amount of change constantly going on.
- Compiler integration: a number of other tools need to use the compiler in
various ways (e.g. cargo, clippy, miri, RLS) that must be supported.
- Compiler stability: the compiler should not crash or fail ungracefully on the
stable channel.
- Rust stability: the compiler must respect rust's stability guarantees by not
breaking programs that previously compiled despite the many changes that are
always going on to its implementation.
- Limitations of other tools: rustc uses LLVM in its backend, and LLVM has some
strengths we leverage and some limitations/weaknesses we need to work around.
- And others that I'm probably forgetting.
So, as you read through the rest of the guide, keep these things in mind. They
will often inform decisions that we make.
### Constant change
One thing to keep in mind is that `rustc` is a real production-quality product.
As such, it has its fair share of codebase churn and technical debt. A lot of
the designs discussed throughout this guide are idealized designs that are not
fully realized yet. And things keep changing so that it is hard to keep this
guide completely up to date on everything!
The compiler definitely has rough edges, but because of its design it is able
to keep up with the requirements above.
### Intermediate representations
As with most compilers, `rustc` uses some intermediate representations (IRs) to
facilitate computations. In general, working directly with the source code is
extremely inconvenient. Source code is designed to be human-friendly while at
the same time being unambiguous, but it's less convenient for doing something
like, say, type checking.
Instead most compilers, including `rustc`, build some sort of IR out of the
source code which is easier to analyze. `rustc` has a few IRs, each optimized
for different things:
- Abstract Syntax Tree (AST): the abstract syntax tree is built from the stream
of tokens produced by the lexer directly from the source code. It represents
pretty much exactly what the user wrote. It helps to do some syntactic sanity
checking (e.g. checking that a type is expected where the user wrote one).
- High-level IR (HIR): This is a sort of very desugared AST. It's still close
to what the user wrote syntactically, but it includes some implicit things
such as some elided lifetimes, etc. This IR is amenable to type checking.
- HAIR: This is an intermediate between HIR and MIR. This only exists to make
it easier to lower HIR to MIR.
- Middle-level IR (MIR): This IR is basically a Control-Flow Graph (CFG). A CFG
is a type of diagram that shows the basic blocks of a program and how control
flow can go between them. Likewise, MIR also has a bunch of basic blocks with
simple typed statements inside them (e.g. assignment, simple computations,
dropping values, etc). MIR is used for borrow checking and a bunch of other
important dataflow based checks, such as checking for uninitialized values.
It is also used for a bunch of optimizations and for constant evaluation (via
MIRI). Because MIR is still generic, we can do a lot of analyses here more
efficiently than after monomorphization.
- LLVM IR: This is the standard form of all input to the LLVM compiler. LLVM IR
is basically a sort of typed assembly language with lots of annotations. It's
a standard format that is used by all compilers that use LLVM (e.g. the clang
C compiler also outputs LLVM IR). LLVM IR is designed to be easy for other
compilers to emit and also rich enough for LLVM to run a bunch of
optimizations on it.
### Queries
The first big implementation choice is the _query_ system. The rust compiler
uses a query system which is unlike most textbook compilers, which are
organized as a series of passes over the code that execute sequentially. The
compiler does this to make incremental compilation possible -- that is, if the
user makes a change to their program and recompiles, we want to do as little
redundant work as possible to produce the new binary.
In rustc, all the major steps above are organized as a bunch of queries that
call each other. For example, there is a query to ask for the type of something
and another to ask for the optimized MIR of a function, and so on. These
queries can call each other and are all tracked through the query system, and
the results of the queries are cached on disk so that we can tell which
queries' results changed from the last compilation and only redo those. This is
how incremental compilation works.
In principle, for the query-fied steps, we do each of the above for each item
individually. For example, we will take the HIR for a function and use queries
to ask for the LLVM IR for that HIR. This drives the generation of optimized
MIR, which drives the borrow checker, which drives the generation of MIR, and
so on.
... except that this is very over-simplified. In fact, some queries are not
cached on disk, and some parts of the compiler have to run for all code anyway
for correctness even if the code is dead code (e.g. the borrow checker). For
example, [currently the `mir_borrowck` query is first executed on all functions
of a crate.][passes] Then the codegen backend invokes the
`collect_and_partition_mono_items` query, which first recursively requests the
`optimized_mir` for all reachable functions, which in turn runs `mir_borrowck`
for that function and then creates codegen units. This kind of split will need
to remain to ensure that unreachable functions still have their errors emitted.
[passes]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/blob/45ebd5808afd3df7ba842797c0fcd4447ddf30fb/src/librustc_interface/passes.rs#L824
Moreover, the compiler wasn't originally built to use a query system; the query
system has been retrofitted into the compiler, so parts of it are not
query-fied yet. Also, LLVM isn't our code, so obviously that isn't querified
either. The plan is to eventually query-fy all of the steps listed in the
previous section, but as of this writing, only the steps between HIR and
LLVM-IR are query-fied. That is, lexing and parsing are done all at once for
the whole program.
One other thing to mention here is the all-important "typing context",
[`TyCtxt`], which is a giant struct that is at the center of all things. All
queries are defined as methods on the [`TyCtxt`] type, and the in-memory query
cache is stored there too. In the code, there is usually a variable called
`tcx` which is a handle on the typing context. You will also see lifetimes with
the name `'tcx`, which means that something is tied to the lifetime of the
`TyCtxt` (usually it is stored or _interned_ there).
[`TyCtxt`]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/nightly-rustc/rustc/ty/struct.TyCtxt.html
### `ty::Ty`
Types are really important in Rust, and they form the core of a lot of compiler
analyses. The main type (in the compiler) that represents types (in the user's
program) is [`rustc::ty::Ty`][ty]. This is so important that we have a whole chapter
on [`ty::Ty`][ty], but for now, we just want to mention that it exists and is the way
`rustc` represents types!
Oh, and also the `rustc::ty` module defines the `TyCtxt` struct we mentioned before.
[ty]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/nightly-rustc/rustc/ty/type.Ty.html
### Parallelism
Compiler performance is a problem that we would very much like to improve on
(and are always working on). One aspect of that is attempting to parallelize
`rustc` itself.
Currently, there is only one part of rustc that is already parallel: codegen.
During monomorphization, the compiler will split up all the code to be
generated into smaller chunks called _codegen units_. These are then generated
by independent instances of LLVM. Since they are independent, we can run them
in parallel. At the end, the linker is run to combine all the codegen units
together into one binary.
However, the rest of the compiler is still not yet parallel. There have been
lots of efforts spent on this, but it is generally a hard problem. The current
approach is (**TODO: verify**) to turn `RefCell`s into `Mutex`s -- that is, we
switch to thread-safe internal mutability. However, there are ongoing
challenges with lock contention, maintaining query-system invariants under
concurrency, and the complexity of the code base. One can try out the current
work by enabling parallel compilation in `config.toml`. It's still early days,
but there are already some promising performance improvements.
### Bootstrapping
**TODO (or do we want such a section)?**
## A flow chart or walkthrough diagram
**TODO**
# Unresolved Questions
**TODO: find answers to these**
- Does LLVM ever do optimizations in debug builds?
- How do I explore phases of the compile process in my own sources (lexer,
parser, HIR, etc)? - e.g., `cargo rustc -- -Zunpretty=hir-tree` allows you to
view HIR representation
- What is the main source entry point for `X`?
- Where do phases diverge for cross-compilation to machine code across
different platforms?
# References
- Command line parsing
- Guide: [The Rustc Driver and Interface](https://rust-lang.github.io/rustc-guide/rustc-driver.html)
- Driver definition: [`rustc_driver`](https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/nightly-rustc/rustc_driver/)
- Main entry point: **TODO**
- Lexical Analysis: Lex the user program to a stream of tokens
- Guide: [Lexing and Parsing](https://rust-lang.github.io/rustc-guide/the-parser.html)
- Lexer definition: [`librustc_lexer`](https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/nightly-rustc/rustc_lexer/index.html)
- Main entry point: **TODO**
- Parsing: Parse the stream of tokens to an Abstract Syntax Tree (AST)
- Guide: [Lexing and Parsing](https://rust-lang.github.io/rustc-guide/the-parser.html)
- Parser definition: [`librustc_parse`](https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/nightly-rustc/rustc_parse/index.html)
- Main entry point: **TODO**
- AST definition: [`syntax`](https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/nightly-rustc/syntax/index.html)
- The High Level Intermediate Representation (HIR)
- Guide: [The HIR](https://rust-lang.github.io/rustc-guide/hir.html)
- Guide: [Identifiers in the HIR](https://rust-lang.github.io/rustc-guide/hir.html#identifiers-in-the-hir)
- Guide: [The HIR Map](https://rust-lang.github.io/rustc-guide/hir.html#the-hir-map)
- Guide: [Lowering AST to HIR](https://rust-lang.github.io/rustc-guide/lowering.html)
- How to view HIR representation for your code `cargo rustc -- -Zunpretty=hir-tree`
- Rustc HIR definition: [`rustc_hir`](https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/nightly-rustc/rustc_hir/index.html)
- Main entry point: **TODO**
- Type Inference
- Guide: [Type Inference](https://rust-lang.github.io/rustc-guide/type-inference.html)
- Guide: [The ty Module: Representing Types](https://rust-lang.github.io/rustc-guide/ty.html) (semantics)
- Main entry point: **TODO**
- The Mid Level Intermediate Representation (MIR)
- Guide: [The MIR (Mid level IR)](https://rust-lang.github.io/rustc-guide/mir/index.html)
- Definition: [`librustc/mir`](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/tree/master/src/librustc/mir)
- Definition of source that manipulates the MIR: [`librustc_mir`](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/tree/master/src/librustc_mir)
- Main entry point: **TODO**
- The Borrow Checker
- Guide: [MIR Borrow Check](https://rust-lang.github.io/rustc-guide/borrow_check.html)
- Definition: [`rustc_mir/borrow_check`](https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/nightly-rustc/rustc_mir/borrow_check/index.html)
- Main entry point: **TODO**
- MIR Optimizations
- Guide: [MIR Optimizations](https://rust-lang.github.io/rustc-guide/mir/optimizations.html)
- Definition: [`rustc_mir/transform`](https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/nightly-rustc/rustc_mir/transform/index.html) **TODO: is this correct?**
- Main entry point: **TODO**
- Code Generation
- Guide: [Code Generation](https://rust-lang.github.io/rustc-guide/codegen.html)
- Guide: [Generating LLVM IR](https://rust-lang.github.io/rustc-guide/codegen.html#generating-llvm-ir) - **TODO: this is not available yet**
- Generating Machine Code from LLVM IR with LLVM - **TODO: reference?**
- Main entry point MIR -> LLVM IR: **TODO**
- Main entry point LLVM IR -> Machine Code **TODO**