Previous to this patch each time a bytes object was referenced a new
instance (with the same data) was created. With this patch a single
bytes object is created in the compiler and is loaded directly at execute
time as a true constant (similar to loading bignum and float objects).
This saves on allocating RAM and means that bytes objects can now be
used when the memory manager is locked (eg in interrupts).
The MP_BC_LOAD_CONST_BYTES bytecode was removed as part of this.
Generated bytecode is slightly larger due to storing a pointer to the
bytes object instead of the qstr identifier.
Code size is reduced by about 60 bytes on Thumb2 architectures.
Previous to this patch the printing mechanism was a bit of a tangled
mess. This patch attempts to consolidate printing into one interface.
All (non-debug) printing now uses the mp_print* family of functions,
mainly mp_printf. All these functions take an mp_print_t structure as
their first argument, and this structure defines the printing backend
through the "print_strn" function of said structure.
Printing from the uPy core can reach the platform-defined print code via
two paths: either through mp_sys_stdout_obj (defined pert port) in
conjunction with mp_stream_write; or through the mp_plat_print structure
which uses the MP_PLAT_PRINT_STRN macro to define how string are printed
on the platform. The former is only used when MICROPY_PY_IO is defined.
With this new scheme printing is generally more efficient (less layers
to go through, less arguments to pass), and, given an mp_print_t*
structure, one can call mp_print_str for efficiency instead of
mp_printf("%s", ...). Code size is also reduced by around 200 bytes on
Thumb2 archs.
I.e. in this mode, C stack will never be used to call a Python function,
but if there's no free heap for a call, it will be reported as
RuntimeError (as expected), not MemoryError.
Despite initial guess, this code factoring does not hamper performance.
In fact it seems to improve speed by a little: running pystone(1.2) on
pyboard (which gives a very stable result) this patch takes pystones
from 1729.51 up to 1742.16. Also, pystones on x64 increase by around
the same proportion (but it's much noisier).
Taking a look at the generated machine code, stack usage with this patch
is unchanged, and call is tail-optimised with all arguments in
registers. Code size decreases by about 50 bytes on Thumb2 archs.
Eg, "() + 1" now tells you that __add__ is not supported for tuple and
int types (before it just said the generic "binary operator"). We reuse
the table of names for slot lookup because it would be a waste of code
space to store the pretty name for each operator.
This patch consolidates all global variables in py/ core into one place,
in a global structure. Root pointers are all located together to make
GC tracing easier and more efficient.
This allows to implement KeyboardInterrupt on unix, and a much safer
ctrl-C in stmhal port. First ctrl-C is a soft one, with hope that VM
will notice it; second ctrl-C is a hard one that kills anything (for
both unix and stmhal).
One needs to check for a pending exception in the VM only for jump
opcodes. Others can't produce an infinite loop (infinite recursion is
caught by stack check).
Because (for Thumb) a function pointer has the LSB set, pointers to
dynamic functions in RAM (eg native, viper or asm functions) were not
being traced by the GC. This patch is a comprehensive fix for this.
Addresses issue #820.
Benefits: won't crash baremetal targets, will provide Python source location
when not implemented feature used (it will no longer provide C source
location, but just grep for error message).
__debug__ now resolves to True or False. Its value needs to be set by
mp_set_debug().
TODO: call mp_set_debug in unix/ port.
TODO: optimise away "if False:" statements in compiler.
Need to have a policy as to how far we go adding keyword support to
built ins. It's nice to have, and gets better CPython compatibility,
but hurts the micro nature of uPy.
Addresses issue #577.
Blanket wide to all .c and .h files. Some files originating from ST are
difficult to deal with (license wise) so it was left out of those.
Also merged modpyb.h, modos.h, modstm.h and modtime.h in stmhal/.
These are to assist in writing native C functions that take positional
and keyword arguments. mp_arg_check_num is for just checking the
number of arguments is correct. mp_arg_parse_all is for parsing
positional and keyword arguments with default values.
Attempt to address issue #386. unique_code_id's have been removed and
replaced with a pointer to the "raw code" information. This pointer is
stored in the actual byte code (aligned, so the GC can trace it), so
that raw code (ie byte code, native code and inline assembler) is kept
only for as long as it is needed. In memory it's now like a tree: the
outer module's byte code points directly to its children's raw code. So
when the outer code gets freed, if there are no remaining functions that
need the raw code, then the children's code gets freed as well.
This is pretty much like CPython does it, except that CPython stores
indexes in the byte code rather than machine pointers. These indices
index the per-function constant table in order to find the relevant
code.
Based on the discussion in #433. mp_load_attr() is critical-path function,
so any extra check will slowdown any script. As supporting default val
required only for getattr() builtin, move correspending implementation
there (still as a separate function due to concerns of maintainability
of such almost-duplicated code instances).
Finishes addressing issue #424.
In the end this was a very neat refactor that now makes things a lot
more consistent across the py code base. It allowed some
simplifications in certain places, now that everything is a dict object.
Also converted builtins tables to dictionaries. This will be useful
when we need to turn builtins into a proper module.
It's not completely satisfactory, because a failed call to __getattr__
should not raise an exception.
__setattr__ could be implemented, but it would slow down all stores to a
user created object. Need to implement some caching system.
Adding this bytecode allows to remove 4 others related to
function/method calls with * and ** support. Will also help with
bytecodes that make functions/closures with default positional and
keyword args.
Damien George