Instructions

[gabrielfreire]

Hi @tshort ,

i love that you are putting some effort into making Julia standalone AOT a reality, could you explain to me how this would work and how could i make experiment with your implementation to better understand?

are you using a docker machine to work on this? if yes, could you share the Dockerfile ?

i would like to contribute as i would really appreciate to have standalone AOT that's not PackageCompiler huge in julia but i was looking at your commits and i'm kinda lost to be honest.

thank you

[tshort]

On Linux, it's pretty easy. Just compile this branch from source, and you should be able to run the tests under test/standalone-mode/runtests.jl. These days, compiling from source runs pretty quickly. If you're not using Linux, you may try to do the same in a virtual machine or in Docker. If you want to run native on non-Linux, you'll probably have to adapt the scripts in test/standalone-mode.

For WebAssembly output, it's much more complicated, because you need Emscripten and need to compile a 32-bit version of Linux. I'm working on a Dockerfile for that.

[gabrielfreire]

Thank you for your quick reply, do you intend to pull Julia from the master branch ? because i noticed that you are working on Julia code from 6 years ago, is updating the core julia code on your plans?

Do you intend to make a PR for this awesome feature to Julia ? it would be amazing if they could merge this.

I run on Windows, it should be very straightforward to build it in a Docker vm and customize runtests.jl to target dll/exe

I'm thinking on forking Julia #master to try and copy your implementation there, see what happens, any advice ?

Sorry for this bunch of questions, but i'm really excited, i even started learning more about c++ to see if i can do something to help you.

[tshort]

My fork's master is many years old, but the standalone-mode-new branch is within a few weeks of master. I've been updating that branch to follow the jn/codegen-norecursion branch in the main Julia repo.

[tshort]

See this PR.

[gabrielfreire]

i even started learning more about c++ to see Edit, C and C++ *

Ohh i didn't know about standalone-mode-new thank you for pointing me to the right direction, i was reading standalone-mode hehe, i was even a bit sad that the last update was 27 days ago.

Great stuff!

[gabrielfreire]

Hi @tshort, i managed to build your repository for Windows using Cygwin and following the instructions on doc/build/windows.md, the build was successful and i managed to generate a Julia binary. Now i'm trying to execute the standalone-aot tests, so i replace all .o for .a and all .so for .dll

but i'm getting this error when i run

gabriel.freire@gfreire-m1 ~/julia/test/standalone-aot/standalone-exe
$ /home/gabriel.freire/julia/julia-win64/usr/bin/julia.exe compile.jl

Error

$ /home/gabriel.freire/julia/julia-win64/usr/bin/julia.exe compile.jl
┌ Warning: The two argument form of `func_for_method_checked` is deprecated. Pass sparams in addition.
│   caller = irgen(::Any, ::Any) at IRGen.jl:21
└ @ Main.IRGen C:\cygwin64\home\gabriel.freire\julia\test\standalone-aot\IRGen.jl:21
clang version 6.0.1 (tags/RELEASE_601/final)
Target: x86_64-w64-windows-gnu
Thread model: posix
InstalledDir: C:\cygwin64\home\gabriel.freire\julia\julia-win64\usr\tools
 "C:\\cygwin64\\bin\\ld.exe" -m i386pep --shared -Bdynamic -e DllMainCRTStartup --enable-auto-image-base -o libtwox.dll dllcrt2.o "C:\\cygwin64\\lib\\gcc\\x86_64-w64-mingw32\\6.4.0\\crtbegin.o" "-LC:\\cygwin64\\lib\\gcc\\x86_64-w64-mingw32\\6.4.0" "-LC:\\cygwin64\\x86_64-w64-mingw32\\lib" "-LC:\\cygwin64\\lib" "-LC:\\cygwin64\\x86_64-w64-mingw32/sys-root/mingw/lib" libtwox.a -lmingw32 -lgcc_s -lgcc -lmoldname -lmingwex -lmsvcrt -ladvapi32 -lshell32 -luser32 -lkernel32 -lmingw32 -lgcc_s -lgcc -lmoldname -lmingwex -lmsvcrt "C:\\cygwin64\\lib\\gcc\\x86_64-w64-mingw32\\6.4.0\\crtend.o"
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find dllcrt2.o: No such file or directory
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lmingw32
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lmoldname
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lmingwex
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lmsvcrt
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lmingw32
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lmoldname
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lmingwex
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lmsvcrt
clang.exe: error: linker command failed with exit code 1 (use -v to see invocation)
ERROR: LoadError: failed process: Process(`'C:\cygwin64\home\gabriel.freire\julia\julia-win64\usr\tools/clang' -v -shared -fpic libtwox.a -o libtwox.dll`, ProcessExited(1)) [1]

Stacktrace:
 [1] pipeline_error at .\process.jl:819 [inlined]
 [2] #run#545(::Bool, ::typeof(run), ::Cmd) at .\process.jl:734
 [3] run(::Cmd) at .\process.jl:732
 [4] top-level scope at C:\cygwin64\home\gabriel.freire\julia\test\standalone-aot\standalone-exe\compile.jl:22
 [5] include at .\boot.jl:328 [inlined]
 [6] include_relative(::Module, ::String) at .\loading.jl:1094
 [7] include(::Module, ::String) at .\Base.jl:31
 [8] exec_options(::Base.JLOptions) at .\client.jl:295
 [9] _start() at .\client.jl:464
in expression starting at C:\cygwin64\home\gabriel.freire\julia\test\standalone-aot\standalone-exe\compile.jl:19

This is my Clang version

$ ../../../julia-win64/usr/tools/clang -v
clang version 6.0.1 (tags/RELEASE_601/final)
Target: x86_64-w64-windows-gnu
Thread model: posix
InstalledDir: C:\cygwin64\home\gabriel.freire\julia\julia-win64\usr\tools

compile.jl

include("../IRGen.jl")
using .IRGen

twox(x) = 2x
arraysum(x) = sum([x, 1])
myrand() = rand()

funcs = [
    "twox" => (twox, Tuple{Int}),
    "arraysum" => (arraysum, Tuple{Int}),
    "myrand" => (myrand, Tuple{}),
]

dir = @__DIR__
bindir = joinpath(abspath(Sys.BINDIR, ".."), "tools")
libdir = joinpath(abspath(Sys.BINDIR, ".."), "lib")
include_juliadir = joinpath(abspath(Sys.BINDIR, ".."), "include", "julia")

for (fname, (func, sig)) in funcs
    native = irgen(func, sig)
    dump_native(native, "lib$fname.a")
    run(`$bindir/clang -v -shared -fpic lib$fname.a -o lib$fname.dll`)
    run(`$bindir/clang -v -c -std=gnu99 -I'$include_juliadir' -DJULIA_ENABLE_THREADING=1 -fPIC $fname.c`)
    run(`$bindir/clang -v -o $fname $fname.a -L$dir -L$libdir -Wl,--unresolved-symbols=ignore-in-object-files -Wl,-rpath,'.' -Wl,-rpath,'$libdir' -ljulia-debug -ldSFMT -l$fname`)
end

If you could help please.

[tshort]

That's an ambitious attempt. You got farther than I thought. You might need to look at the libdir variable and/or the -L and -l flags.

As a heads up, it looks like this branch is a dead end towards static compilation. See the PR on Julia (now closed).

[gabrielfreire]

I ended up setting up a docker machine with ubuntu and had a lot of fun generating small executables for Julia functions.

As a heads up, it looks like this branch is a dead end towards static compilation. See the PR on Julia (now closed).

Oh no :(, that's sad, i had a lot of fun with your implementation, but hopefully this means they are close to a tree-shaking solution, at the moment PackageCompiler only generates huge executables along with huge .dll/.so.

I could be of more help if i knew more C or C++, but most people tell me i shouldn't waste time learning those and instead try to learn Rust or Go. i really have no idea what to do coming from a more high-level javascript/python/java/c# background with little knowledge of C that i got in University.

I also believe that the only thing stopping Julia from competing with System programming languages like C++/Rust/D/Go/Swift is the ability of generating static binaries. (i could be completely wrong here, let me know please)

I see you are a C/C++ expert, so what would you advise ? Specially now that Microsoft has .NET Core 3 open-sourced and cross-platform, but anyway, C# can't really be compared to C++ in terms of performance of compiler generated code, i think C++ has the best compiler ever.

This language thing is a cross-roads, can't decide, i think i'll stick with C++ just for the sake of being more able to understand what's going on in Julia's sources, i gave it a good read and i was impressed on how much of it i could already make sense of, so i believe it shouldn't be too much of a pain learning C++, and about C... they are very similar anyway, considering C++ is much bigger and has many more features of course.

But i'd love to hear your thoughts/advice on my text full of random stuff.

[tshort]

I'm definitely not a C/C++ expert. I mainly find it painful. I'm an engineer, not a software developer. Languages I'm most comfortable with are first Julia, then R, then Python, then JavaScript, and C/C++ is last.

I've thought about learning Rust because it has great WebAssembly support. I'm mainly interested in converting web apps (here) from JavaScript to Julia, but Rust is an interesting alternative. Rust isn't great at scientific computing, but it's getting better.

As to whether you should learn C/C++, it really depends on your career goals. If you are looking for software development jobs, C/C++ is a great skill--there are tons of jobs in a wide range of fields in a wide range of physical locations. Those are not going away anytime soon. Something like Go or Rust is much more niche. If you are looking for engineering or scientific positions, I'd stick with high-level languages--it'd be good to have passing knowledge of C/C++ so you can read code, but you don't need to be an expert.

[gabrielfreire]

Thank you for your reply.

I'm a software developer, i use mainly Java, C#, Python and Javascript/TypeScript at work and i'm mainly interested in web development, i think this is my main barrier towards C++, everybody says that writing web services in C++ is a nightmare, i think i'll give a chance to Rust and become at least capable of writing simple software in C++, my main interest is Web, Machine Learning and small CLI tools for automation. The only thing that's left for me in Julia is small binary executable generation, and this is what's attractive for me in C++.

[tshort]

As a software developer, it's probably worth learning both Rust and C++. How deep you go is an open question and depends on your needs and interests. Rust seems quite good for web and CLI but lags for machine learning.