Until now, the bootimage build hasn't supported using the Java
invocation API to create a VM, destroy it, and create another in the
same process. Ideally, we would be able to create multiple VMs
simultaneously without any interference between them. In fact, Avian
is designed to support this for the most part, but there are a few
places we use global, mutable state which prevent this from working.
Most notably, the bootimage is modified in-place at runtime, so the
best we can do without extensive changes is to clean up the bootimage
when the VM is destroyed so it's ready for later instances. Hence
this commit.
Ultimately, we can move towards a fully reentrant VM by making the
bootimage immutable, but this will require some care to avoid
performance regressions. Another challenge is our Posix signal
handlers, which currently rely on a global handle to the VM, since you
can't, to my knowledge, pass a context pointer when registering a
signal handler. Thread local variables won't necessarily help, since
a thread might attatch to more than one VM at a time.
Under certain circumstances, the implementations of these functions
may throw errors, so we need to wrap them using vm::run so we don't
try to unwind past the JNI boundary.
This commit ensures that we use the proper memory barriers or locking
necessary to preserve volatile semantics for such fields when accessed
or updated via JNI.
We risked deadlock when waiting for other non-daemon threads to exit
since they could not exit without entering exclusive state, which
required waiting for all other threads to go idle.
Previously, we unwound the stack by following the chain of frame
pointers for normal returns, stack trace creation, and exception
unwinding. On x86, this required reserving EBP/RBP for frame pointer
duties, making it unavailable for general computation and requiring
that it be explicitly saved and restored on entry and exit,
respectively.
On PowerPC, we use an ABI that makes the stack pointer double as a
frame pointer, so it doesn't cost us anything. We've been using the
same convention on ARM, but it doesn't match the native calling
convention, which makes it unusable when we want to call native code
from Java and pass arguments on the stack.
So far, the ARM calling convention mismatch hasn't been an issue
because we've never passed more arguments from Java to native code
than would fit in registers. However, we must now pass an extra
argument (the thread pointer) to e.g. divideLong so it can throw an
exception on divide by zero, which means the last argument must be
passed on the stack. This will clobber the linkage area we've been
using to hold the frame pointer, so we need to stop using it.
One solution would be to use the same convention on ARM as we do on
x86, but this would introduce the same overhead of making a register
unavailable for general use and extra code at method entry and exit.
Instead, this commit removes the need for a frame pointer. Unwinding
involves consulting a map of instruction offsets to frame sizes which
is generated at compile time. This is necessary because stack trace
creation can happen at any time due to Thread.getStackTrace being
called by another thread, and the frame size varies during the
execution of a method.
So far, only x86(_64) is working, and continuations and tail call
optimization are probably broken. More to come.
This rather large commit modifies the VM to use non-local returns to
throw exceptions instead of simply setting Thread::exception and
returning frame-by-frame as it used to. This has several benefits:
* Functions no longer need to check Thread::exception after each call
which might throw an exception (which would be especially tedious
and error-prone now that any function which allocates objects
directly or indirectly might throw an OutOfMemoryError)
* There's no need to audit the code for calls to functions which
previously did not throw exceptions but later do
* Performance should be improved slightly due to both the reduced
need for conditionals and because undwinding now occurs in a single
jump instead of a series of returns
The main disadvantages are:
* Slightly higher overhead for entering and leaving the VM via the
JNI and JDK methods
* Non-local returns can make the code harder to read
* We must be careful to register destructors for stack-allocated
resources with the Thread so they can be called prior to a
non-local return
The non-local return implementation is similar to setjmp/longjmp,
except it uses continuation-passing style to avoid the need for
cooperation from the C/C++ compiler. Native C++ exceptions would have
also been an option, but that would introduce a dependence on
libstdc++, which we're trying to avoid for portability reasons.
Finally, this commit ensures that the VM throws an OutOfMemoryError
instead of aborting when it reaches its memory ceiling. Currently, we
treat the ceiling as a soft limit and temporarily exceed it as
necessary to allow garbage collection and certain internal allocations
to succeed, but refuse to allocate any Java objects until the heap
size drops back below the ceiling.
When trying to create an array class, we try to resolve
java.lang.Object so we can use its vtable in the array class.
However, if Object is missing, we'll try to create and throw a
ClassNotFoundException, which requires creating an array to store the
stack trace, which requires creating an array class, which requires
resolving Object, etc.. This commit short-circuits this process by
telling resolveClass not to create and throw an exception if it can't
find Object.
While doing the above work, I noticed that the implementations of
Classpath::makeThrowable in classpath-avian.cpp and
classpath-openjdk.cpp were identical, so I made makeThrowable a
top-level function.
Finally, I discovered that Thread.setDaemon can only be called before
the target thread has been started, which allowed me to simplify the
code to track daemon threads in the VM.
The main change here is to use a lazily-populated vector to associate
runtime data with classes instead of referencing them directly from
the class which requires updating immutable references in the heap
image. The other changes employ other strategies to avoid trying to
update immutable references.
This allows OpenJDK to access time zone data which is normally found
under java.home, but which we must embed in the executable itself to
create a self-contained build. The VM intercepts various file
operations, looking for paths which start with a prefix specified by
the avian.embed.prefix property and redirecting those operations to an
embedded JAR.
For example, if avian.embed.prefix is "/avian-embedded", and code
calls File.exists() with a path of
"/avian-embedded/javahomeJar/foo.txt", the VM looks for a function
named javahomeJar via dlsym, calls the function to find the memory
region containing the embeded JAR, and finally consults the JAR to see
if the file "foo.txt" exists.
As described in readme.txt, a standalone OpenJDK build embeds all
libraries, classes, and other files needed at runtime in the resulting
binary, eliminating dependencies on external resources.
Rather than try to support mixing Avian's core classes with those of
an external class library -- which necessitates adding a lot of stub
methods which throw UnsupportedOperationExceptions, among other
comprimises -- we're looking to support such external class libraries
in their unmodified forms. The latter strategy has already proven
successful with OpenJDK's class library. Thus, this commit removes
the stub methods, etc., which not only cleans up the code but avoids
misleading application developers as to what classes and methods
Avian's built-in class library supports.
We now consult the JAVA_HOME environment variable to determine where
to find the system library JARs and SOs. Ultimately, we'll want to
support self-contained build, but this allows Avian to behave like a
conventional libjvm.so.
The main changes in this commit ensure that we don't hold the global
class lock when doing class resolution using application-defined
classloaders. Such classloaders may do their own locking (in fact,
it's almost certain), making deadlock likely when mixed with VM-level
locking in various orders.
Other changes include a fix to avoid overflow when waiting for
extremely long intervals and a GC root stack mapping bug.
The biggest change in this commit is to split the system classloader
into two: one for boot classes (e.g. java.lang.*) and another for
application classes. This is necessary to make OpenJDK's security
checks happy.
The rest of the changes include bugfixes and additional JVM method
implementations in classpath-openjdk.cpp.
Whereas the GNU Classpath port used the strategy of patching Classpath
with core classes from Avian so as to minimize changes to the VM, this
port uses the opposite strategy: abstract and isolate
classpath-specific features in the VM similar to how we abstract away
platform-specific features in system.h. This allows us to use an
unmodified copy of OpenJDK's class library, including its core classes
and augmented by a few VM-specific classes in the "avian" package.
In order to facilitate making the VM compatible with multiple class
libraries, it's useful to separate the VM-specific representation of
these classes from the library implementations. This commit
introduces VMClass, VMField, and VMMethod for that purpose.
Before allocating a new reference in NewGlobalReference or when
creating a local reference, we look for a previously-allocated
reference pointing to the same object. This is a linear search, but
usually the number of elements in the reference list is small, whereas
the memory, locking, and allocation overhead of creating duplicate
references can be large.
This helps us support the Java Memory Model without adding a memory
barrier to every object allocation. It's also potentially more
efficient, since we zero out each heap segment all at once instead of
bit-by-bit with each object allocation.
This simplifies the JNI implementation for looking up methods. It also
fixes a bug where an applications calls GetStaticMethodID with class A
and then calls CallStatic<Type>Method with class B which extends A. The
old code would look in the wrong method table and thus call the wrong
method.
We now support immortal objects, which the GC will scan for references
but not consider for collection. On x86_64, we allocate JIT code memory
via mmap, which lets us map memory into the bottom 2GB of the address
space, ensuring that 32-bit relative jumps and calls work.
