[m-rev.] for treview: global, local and field vars in the MLDS

Zoltan Somogyi zoltan.somogyi at runbox.com
Fri Jul 21 03:03:24 AEST 2017


(The first attempt to send this message bounced as too big, which is why
two of the attached files are gzipped.)

This diff replaces the old mlds_data_defn type with three separate types
for the definitions of for global, local and field vars respectively.
This should allow us to encode significantly tighter invariants in the type system,
e.g. code handling classes shouldn't have to prepare to handle global variables
in their fields. However, to keep this diff of a manageable size, this diff
mostly only creates such opportunities; taking advantage of them will come later.

I want to start on that "later" part soon, so if no-one says that they will review
the diff in the next day or so, I will commit the diff, and deal with any review 
comments later.

The diff passes bootcheck in hlc.gc. For the java and csharp grades, the output
of the updated compiler is NOT bit-identical with the output of the previous compiler,
as shown by the output of the make_java_csharp_diff tool I committed earlier,
which is attached as JAVA_CSHARP_DIFF.

There are four kinds of differences.

1. The compiler generates Java/C# code for functions in a different order.
To eliminate such differences, I modified both the base and test compilers
to sort function definitions before writing them out in mlds_to_{cs,java}.m.
Therefore this difference is NOT in JAVA_CSHARP_DIFF. The others are.

2. The new compiler always module-qualifies references to runtime system
enum constants that are notionally defined in private_builtin.m. The old
compiler abused the MLDS (treating those constants as if they were global
variables) in a way that module qualified them everywhere *except*
in private_builtin.java.

3. Almost *all* of the diff part of JAVA_CSHARP_DIFF consists of the
following single difference, repeated in lots and lots of times:

- /* generic_type */ java.lang.Object closure = null;
+ /* generic_type */ java.lang.Object closure = closure_arg;
cord.Cord_1 conv0_HeadVar__3_3 = null;
- closure = closure_arg;

I don't know what exactly causes the new compiler to be able to apply
the optimization (moving the first assignment to a variable into the
variable's initializer) when the old compiler can't, but since the new code
is better, I am not motivated to undo this difference.

4. In both the Java and C# translations of mmc_analysis.m, there is
what appears to be a more complex version of difference #3.

As far as I know, none of the above should cause any problems, but I am
of course open to correction. In fact, I think the only parts of this change
that need review are these four differences, and the parts of the diff
that deal with the files singled out in the log file. The parts of the diff
that deal with files that only "conform to the changes above" are boring
and can be skipped, so the review job is not as big as it appears from
the size of the diff.

Zoltan. 
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