This patch compresses the second part of the bytecode prelude which
contains the source file name, function name, source-line-number mapping
and cell closure information. This part of the prelude now begins with a
single varible length unsigned integer which encodes 2 numbers, being the
byte-size of the following 2 sections in the header: the "source info
section" and the "closure section". After decoding this variable unsigned
integer it's possible to skip over one or both of these sections very
easily.
This scheme saves about 2 bytes for most functions compared to the original
format: one in the case that there are no closure cells, and one because
padding was eliminated.
The start of the bytecode prelude contains 6 numbers telling the amount of
stack needed for the Python values and exceptions, and the signature of the
function. Prior to this patch these numbers were all encoded one after the
other (2x variable unsigned integers, then 4x bytes), but using so many
bytes is unnecessary.
An entropy analysis of around 150,000 bytecode functions from the CPython
standard library showed that the optimal Shannon coding would need about
7.1 bits on average to encode these 6 numbers, compared to the existing 48
bits.
This patch attempts to get close to this optimal value by packing the 6
numbers into a single, varible-length unsigned integer via bit-wise
interleaving. The interleaving scheme is chosen to minimise the average
number of bytes needed, and at the same time keep the scheme simple enough
so it can be implemented without too much overhead in code size or speed.
The scheme requires about 10.5 bits on average to store the 6 numbers.
As a result most functions which originally took 6 bytes to encode these 6
numbers now need only 1 byte (in 80% of cases).
From the beginning of this project the RAISE_VARARGS opcode was named and
implemented following CPython, where it has an argument (to the opcode)
counting how many args the raise takes:
raise # 0 args (re-raise previous exception)
raise exc # 1 arg
raise exc from exc2 # 2 args (chained raise)
In the bytecode this operation therefore takes 2 bytes, one for
RAISE_VARARGS and one for the number of args.
This patch splits this opcode into 3, where each is now a single byte.
This reduces bytecode size by 1 byte for each use of raise. Every byte
counts! It also has the benefit of reducing code size (on all ports except
nanbox).
This commit adds support for sys.settrace, allowing to install Python
handlers to trace execution of Python code. The interface follows CPython
as closely as possible. The feature is disabled by default and can be
enabled via MICROPY_PY_SYS_SETTRACE.
POP_BLOCK and POP_EXCEPT are now the same, and are always followed by a
JUMP. So this optimisation reduces code size, and RAM usage of bytecode by
two bytes for each try-except handler.
This patch fixes a bug in the VM when breaking within a try-finally. The
bug has to do with executing a break within the finally block of a
try-finally statement. For example:
def f():
for x in (1,):
print('a', x)
try:
raise Exception
finally:
print(1)
break
print('b', x)
f()
Currently in uPy the above code will print:
a 1
1
1
segmentation fault (core dumped) micropython
Not only is there a seg fault, but the "1" in the finally block is printed
twice. This is because when the VM executes a finally block it doesn't
really know if that block was executed due to a fall-through of the try (no
exception raised), or because an exception is active. In particular, for
nested finallys the VM has no idea which of the nested ones have active
exceptions and which are just fall-throughs. So when a break (or continue)
is executed it tries to unwind all of the finallys, when in fact only some
may be active.
It's questionable whether break (or return or continue) should be allowed
within a finally block, because they implicitly swallow any active
exception, but nevertheless it's allowed by CPython (although almost never
used in the standard library). And uPy should at least not crash in such a
case.
The solution here relies on the fact that exception and finally handlers
always appear in the bytecode after the try body.
Note: there was a similar bug with a return in a finally block, but that
was previously fixed in b735208403
Changes to the layout of the bytecode header meant that this debug code was
no longer compiling. This is now fixed and a new compile-time option is
introduced, MICROPY_DEBUG_VM_STACK_OVERFLOW, to turn on this feature (which
is disabled by default). This option is needed because more than one file
needs to cooperate to make this check work.
Calling memset(NULL, value, 0) is not standards compliant so we must add an
explicit check that emit->label_offsets is indeed not NULL before calling
memset (this pointer will be NULL on the first pass of the parse tree and
it's more logical / safer to check this pointer rather than check that the
pass is not the first one).
Code sanitizers will warn if NULL is passed as the first value to memset,
and compilers may optimise the code based on the knowledge that any pointer
passed to memset is guaranteed not to be NULL.
Damien George
Milan Rossa
Jeff Epler