This plugin provides essential building block for implementing incremental computations in your programs. The idea behind incremental computations is that if you do the same calculation multiple times but with slightly different inputs you don't have to recompute everything from scratch. Also you don't want to adopt special algorithms either, you would like to write your code in standard from scratch manner and get incrementality for free when it is possible.
The plugin computes the digest of the proc bodies, recursively hashing all called procs as well . Such digest with the digest of the argument values gives a good "name" for the result. Terminology loosely follows paper "Incremental Computation with Names" link below. It works well if you have no side effects in your computations. If you have global state in your computations then you will need problem specific workarounds to represent global state in set of "names" . SideEffect tracking in Nim also useful in this topic.
Classical examples:
Dashboard with ticking data. New data arrives non stop and you would like to update the dashboard recomputing only changed outputs.
Excel spreadsheet where user changes one cell and you would like to recompute all cells that are affected by the change, but do not want to recompute every cell in the spreadsheet.
* squashed work by Zahary
* squashing a ton of useful history... otherwise rebasing on top of upstream Nim after commit 82c009a2cb would be impossible.
* Code review changes; Working test suite (without code reloading enabled)
* - documentation
- implemented the HCR test - almost works...
- fix the issue on Unix where for executable targets the source file for the main module of a project in nimcache was being overwritten with the binary itself (and thus the actual source code was lost)
- fixing embedded paths to shared objects on unix (the "lib" prefix was being prepended to the entire path instead of just the filename)
- other fixes
- removing unnecessary includes since that file is already included in chcks.nim which is in turn included in system.nim (and previously was getting imported in chcks.nim but then system.nim improts something... and that breaks HCR (perhaps it could be fixed but it would be nice not to import anything in system))
* fix for clang & C++ - explicitly casting a function pointer to void*
more stable mangling of parameter names when HCR is on
the length of the static arrays in the DatInit functions is now part of the name of the variables, so when they get resized they get also recreated
more stable mangling for inline functions - no longer depends on the module which first used them
work on the new complicated HCR test - turned surprisingly complex - WIP
test now successfully passes even when re-running `koch test` (previously when the nimcache wasn't cold that lead to errors)
better documentation
calling setStackBottomWith for PreMain
passes over the HcrInit/DatInit/Init calls of all modules are now in the proper order (first all of one type, then all of the next). Also typeinfo globals are registered (created) in a single pass before the DatInit pass (because of the way generic instantiations are handled)
Fix the test suite execution on macOs
fix for being able to query the program arguments when using HCR on posix!
other fixes
* Bugfix: Fix a compilation error in C++ mode when a function pointer
is converted to a raw pointer
* basic documentation for the new hot code reloading semantics
* Add change log entry
* Don't re-execute the top-level statements while reloading JS code
* fix a number of tests broken in a recent bugfix
* Review changes
* Added {.executeOnReload.} pragma that indicates top-level statements
that should be executed on each reload. To make this work, I've modified
the way the `if (hcr_init_) {...}` guards are produced in the init code.
This still needs more work as the new guards seem to be inserted within
the previously generated guards.
This change also removes the need for `lastRegistedGlobal` in nimhcr.
* Implemented the `signatureHash` magic and the `hasModuleChanged` API
depending on it (the actual logic is not imlemented yet).
* Add the "hcr" prefix to all HCR-related symbols in the system module.
Added a new `hotcodereloading` module exporting the high-level API to
the user.
Besides being more hygienic, this was also required in order to make
it possible to use macros in the high-level API. Without the split,
`system` would have to import `macros`, which was going to produce
the well-known init problems.
* Attempted to solve the "GC markers problem".
Crashes were expected with the previous code, because the GC markers
were compiled as normal procs are registered in the GC. When their
module is unloaded, dangling pointers will remain in the GC tables.
To solve this issue, I don't register any GC markers when HCR is on,
but I add them to the HCR globals metadata and I use a single marker
registed in nimhcr during the initialization of the system module that
will be responsible for marking all globals.
* fix a compilation error
* - implemented the hasModuleChanged functionality
- tuples can be returned and broken into different vars in global scope
- added comments for the closnig scopes of the if statements in the init proc
- the new executeOnReload pragma works now!
- other fixes
* finally! fixing this hack in a proper way - declaring the destructor out of line (out of the class body) - we no longer need to forward-declare popCurrentExceptionEx
* Force full module parsing
This is a temporary hack that breaks some tests. I'll investigate
later how these can be fixed.
* tuples are now properly handled when global!
* these comments mess up the codegen in debug mode when $n is not actually a new line (or something like that) - these labels are intended only for GOTO labels anyway...
* "solved" the issue with the .pdb locks on windows when a binary is being debugged and hot code reloading is used at the same time
* fixes after rebasing...
* small fixes for the test
* better handling of globals! no more compiler crashes for locals with the global pragma, also simplified code around loops in global scope which have local vars (actually globals)
* we can now use the global pragma even for ... globals!
* the right output
* lets try those boehm GC tests
* after the test is ran it will be at its starting state - no git modifications
* clarification in the docs
* removed unnecessary line directives for forward declarations of functions - they were causing trouble with hot code reloading when no semantic change propagates to the main module but a line directive got changed and thus the main module had to be recompiled since the .c code had changed
* fixed bug! was inserting duplicate keys into the table and later was removing only 1 copy of all the duplicates (after a few reloads)
* no longer breaking into DatInit code when not supposed to
* fixes after rebasing
* yet more fixes after rebasing
* Update jssys.nim
* Rework the HCR path-handling logic
After reviewing the code more carefully, I've noticed that the old logic
will be broken when the user overrides the '--out:f' compiler option.
Besides fixing this issues, I took the opportunity to implement the
missing '--outdir:d' option.
Other changes:
* ./koch test won't overwrite any HCR and RTL builds located in nim/lib
* HCR and RTL are compiled with --threads:on by default
* Clean up the globals registration logic
* Handle non-flattened top-level stmtlists in JS as well
* The HCR is not supported with the Boehm GC yet
Also fixes some typos and the expected output of the HCR integration test
* The GC marker procs are now properly used as trampolines
* Fix the HCR integration test in release builds
* Fix ./koch tools
* this forward declaration doesn't seem to be necessary, and in fact breaks HCR because a 2nd function pointer is emitted for this externed/rtl func
* the forward declaration I removed in the last commit was actually necessary
* Attempt to make all tests green
* Fix tgenscript
* BAT file for running the HCR integration test on Windows [skip ci]
* Fix the docgen tests
* A final fix for Travis (hopefully)
