Implement defer in a different way, which results in smaller binaries.
The binary produced from testdata/calls.go (the only test case with
defer) is reduced a bit in size, but the savings in bytes greatly vary
by architecture:
Cortex-M0: -96 .text / flash
WebAssembly: -215 entire file
Linux x64: -32 .text
Deferred functions in TinyGo were implemented by creating a linked list
of struct objects that contain a function pointer to a thunk, a pointer
to the next object, and a list of parameters. When it was time to run
deferred functions, a helper runtime function called each function
pointer (the thunk) with the struct pointer as a parameter. This thunk
would then in turn extract the saved function parameter from the struct
and call the real function.
What this commit changes, is that the loop to call deferred functions is
moved into the end of the function (practically inlining it) and
replacing the thunks with direct calls inside this loop. This makes it
much easier for LLVM to perform all kinds of optimizations like inlining
and dead argument elimination.
The default priority is 0 (highest) which is reserved by the SoftDevice.
For normal operation the exact priority level doesn't matter, only the
relative priority matters. So this change makes the code compatible with
the SoftDevice without actually changing the behavior.
This simplifies the ABI a lot and makes future changes easier.
In the future, determining which functions need a context parameter
should be moved from IR generation into an optimization pass, avoiding
the need for recursively scanning the Go SSA.
This commit changes many things:
* Most interface-related operations are moved into an optimization
pass for more modularity. IR construction creates pseudo-calls which
are lowered in this pass.
* Type codes are assigned in this interface lowering pass, after DCE.
* Type codes are sorted by usage: types more often used in type
asserts are assigned lower numbers to ease jump table construction
during machine code generation.
* Interface assertions are optimized: they are replaced by constant
false, comparison against a constant, or a typeswitch with only
concrete types in the general case.
* Interface calls are replaced with unreachable, direct calls, or a
concrete type switch with direct calls depending on the number of
implementing types. This hopefully makes some interface patterns
zero-cost.
These changes lead to a ~0.5K reduction in code size on Cortex-M for
testdata/interface.go. It appears that a major cause for this is the
replacement of function pointers with direct calls, which are far more
susceptible to optimization. Also, not having a fixed global array of
function pointers greatly helps dead code elimination.
This change also makes future optimizations easier, like optimizations
on interface value comparisons.
This avoids a ton of duplication and makes it easier to change a generic
target (for example, the "cortex-m" target) for all boards that use it.
Also, by making it possible to inherit properties from a parent target
specification, it is easier to support out-of-tree boards that don't
have to be updated so often. A target specification for a
special-purpose board can simply inherit the specification of a
supported chip and override the properites it needs to override (like
the programming interface).
This can be used in the future to trigger garbage collection. For now,
it provides a more useful error message in case the heap is completely
filled up.
Make sure every to-be-implemented GC can use the same interface. As a
result, a 1MB chunk of RAM is allocated on Unix systems on init instead
of allocating on demand.
Ayke van Laethem
Ron Evans
Justin Clift
Darren Rush