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Default feature specification #13

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ehuss opened this issue Jul 20, 2019 · 2 comments
Open

Default feature specification #13

ehuss opened this issue Jul 20, 2019 · 2 comments
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features Issues related to Cargo features implementation Implementation exploration and tracking issues plan before stabilization This needs a plan for how to address before stabilization, but does not need to be implemented. S-needs-design Status: needs design work

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@ehuss
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ehuss commented Jul 20, 2019

This issue is for working through the implementation issues for determining the default set of cfg values for the standard library.

Currently the default set is driven by the rust build system, which uses the config.toml file which is configured by various parts of the CI scripts. The build system sets Cargo features (such as here)
to control how the standard library is built.

The build system also sets environment variables (like LLVM_CONFIG for sanitizers), which are picked up by build scripts.

Currently Cargo has no way of knowing which features or environment variables to set. They change per platform, and based on build configuration settings.

Some rough ideas on how to approach this:

  • Hard-code the values in Cargo. The MVP implementation will likely take this route, but it is not a realistic option.
  • Include some configuration file in the source distribution that declares the default features used per platform. This may be difficult to generate.
  • Make the user explicitly declare the features they need.
@ehuss ehuss added features Issues related to Cargo features implementation Implementation exploration and tracking issues labels Jul 20, 2019
@SimonSapin
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Make the user explicitly declare the features they need.

This sounds like #4. But even if there is such a choice available, the default should likely be the same configuration that was used to build the compiler.

@Ericson2314
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Hard-code the values in Cargo. The MVP implementation will likely take this route, but it is not a realistic option.

This sounds like a bad idea even for the MVP.

Make the user explicitly declare the features they need.

Or even leave it to them to declare env vars and things where the build.rs picks it up. This is an easier MVP, and fine for most tasks. This also encourages us to triage what complexity is really needed, rather than leave it cluttering the Cargo codebase by default.

Remember that the users that need std-aware Cargo most probably won't even use std.

bors added a commit to rust-lang/cargo that referenced this issue Sep 3, 2019
Basic standard library support.

This is not intended to be useful to anyone. If people want to try it, that's great, but do not rely on this. This is only for experimenting and setting up for future work.

This adds a flag `-Zbuild-std` to build the standard library with a project. The flag can also take optional comma-separated crate names, like `-Zbuild-std=core`. Default is `std,core,panic_unwind,compiler_builtins`.

Closes rust-lang/wg-cargo-std-aware#10.

Note: I can probably break some of the refactoring into smaller PRs if necessary.

## Overview
The general concept here is to use two resolvers, and to combine everything in the Unit graph. There are a number of changes to support this:

- A synthetic workspace for the standard library is created to set up the patches and members correctly.
- Decouple `unit_dependencies` from `Context` to make it easier to manage.
- Add `features` to `Unit` to keep it unique and to remove the need to query a resolver.
- Add a `UnitDep` struct which encodes the edges between `Unit`s. This removes the need to query a resolver for `extern_crate_name` and `public`.
- Remove `Resolver` from `BuildContext` to avoid any confusion and to keep the complexity focused in `unit_dependencies`.
- Remove `Links` from `Context` since it used the resolver. Adjusted so that instead of checking links at runtime, they are all checked at once in the beginning. Note that it does not check links for the standard lib, but it should be safe? I think `compiler-rt` is the only `links`?

I currently went with a strategy of linking the standard library dependencies using `--extern` (instead of `--sysroot` or `-L`). This has some benefits but some significant drawbacks. See below for some questions.

## For future PRs
- Add Cargo.toml support. See rust-lang/wg-cargo-std-aware#5
- Source is not downloaded. It assumes you have run `rustup component add rust-src`. See rust-lang/wg-cargo-std-aware#11
- `cargo metadata` does not include any information about std. I don't know how this should work.
- `cargo clean` is not std-aware.
- `cargo fetch` does not fetch std dependencies.
- `cargo vendor` does not vendor std dependencies.
- `cargo pkgid` is not std-aware.
- `--target` is required on the command-line. This should default to host-as-target.
- `-p` is not std aware.
- A synthetic `Cargo.toml` workspace is created which has to know about things like `rustc-std-workspace-core`. Perhaps rust-lang/rust should publish the source with this `Cargo.toml` already created?
- `compiler_builtins` uses default features (pure Rust implementation, etc.). See rust-lang/wg-cargo-std-aware#15
    - `compiler_builtins` may need to be built without debug assertions, see [this](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/blob/8e917f48382c6afaf50568263b89d35fba5d98e4/src/bootstrap/bin/rustc.rs#L210-L214). Could maybe use profile overrides.
- Panic issues:
    - `panic_abort` is not yet supported, though it should probably be easy. It could maybe look at the profile to determine which panic implementation to use? This requires more hard-coding in Cargo to know about rustc implementation details.
    - [This](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/blob/8e917f48382c6afaf50568263b89d35fba5d98e4/src/bootstrap/bin/rustc.rs#L186-L201) should probably be handled where `panic` is set for `panic_abort` and `compiler_builtins`. I would like to get a test case for it. This can maybe be done with profile overrides?
- Using two resolvers is quite messy and causes a lot of complications. It would be ideal if it could only use one, though that may not be possible for the foreseeable future. See rust-lang/wg-cargo-std-aware#12
- Features are hard-coded. See rust-lang/wg-cargo-std-aware#13
- Lots of various platform-specific support is not included (musl, wasi, windows-gnu, etc.).
- Default `backtrace` is used with C compiler. See rust-lang/wg-cargo-std-aware#16
- Sanitizers are not built. See rust-lang/wg-cargo-std-aware#17
- proc_macro has some hacky code to synthesize its dependencies. See rust-lang/wg-cargo-std-aware#18. This may not be necessary if this uses `--sysroot` instead.
- Profile overrides cause weird linker errors.
  That is:
  ```toml
  [profile.dev.overrides.std]
  opt-level = 2
  ```
  Using `[profile.dev.overrides."*"]` works. I tried fiddling with it, but couldn't figure it out.
  We may also want to consider altering the syntax for profile overrides. Having to repeat the same profile for `std` and `core` and `alloc` and everything else would not be ideal.
- ~~`Context::unit_deps` does not handle build overrides, see #7215.~~ FIXED

## Questions for this PR
- I went with the strategy of using `--extern` to link the standard lib. This seems to work, and I haven't found any problems, but it seems risky. It also forces Cargo to know about certain implicit dependencies like `compiler_builtins` and `panic_*`. The alternative is to create a sysroot and copy all the crates to that directory and pass `--sysroot`. However, this is complicated by pipelining, which would require special support to copy `.rmeta` files when they are generated. Let me know if you think I should use a different strategy. I'm on the fence here, and I think using `--sysroot` may be safer, but adds more complexity.
    - As an aside, if rustc ever tries to grab a crate from sysroot that was not passed in via `--extern`, then it results in duplicate lang items. For example, saying `extern crate proc_macro;` without specifying `proc_macro` as a dependency. We could prevent rustc from ever trying by passing `--sysroot=/nonexistent` to prevent it from trying. Or add an equivalent flag to rustc.
- How should this be tested? I added a janky integration test, but it has some drawbacks. It requires internet access. It is slow. Since it is slow, it reuses the same target directory for multiple tests which makes it awkward to work with.
    - What interesting things are there to test?
    - We may want to disable the test before merging if it seems too annoying to make it the default. It requires rust-src to be downloaded, and takes several minutes to run, and are somewhat platform-dependent.
- How to test that it is actually linking the correct standard library? I did tests locally with a modified libcore, but I can't think of a good way to do that in the test suite.
- I did not add `__CARGO_DEFAULT_LIB_METADATA` to the hash. I had a hard time coming up with a test case where it would matter.
    - My only thought is that it is a problem because libstd includes a dylib, which prevents the hash from being added to the filename. It does cause recompiles when switching between compilers, for example, when it normally wouldn't.
    - Very dumb question: Why exactly does libstd include a dylib? This can cause issues (see rust-lang/rust#56443).
    - This should probably change, but I want to better understand it first.
- The `bin_nostd` test needs to link libc on linux, and I'm not sure I understand why. I'm concerned there is something wrong there. libstd does not do that AFAIK.
@ehuss ehuss added plan before stabilization This needs a plan for how to address before stabilization, but does not need to be implemented. S-needs-design Status: needs design work labels May 3, 2023
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