[llvm-dev] BoF: Shipping Software as LLVM IR (@Upcoming Dev Mtg)

Thu Oct 27 13:59:09 PDT 2016

Hi

I am late to the party. Here is my personal take of the topic:

* Do you ship software as IR today? What lessons have you learned?
Yes. We accept AppStore submission in bitcode (LLVM IR). The core function in clang is upstreamed and you can look up the related code path triggered by -fembed-bitcode option.

* Challenges of shipping software as IR
Compatibility: We are trying to enhance the bitcode compatibility tests but most of them only covers the bitcode reader. But the compatibility issue goes way beyond that. It is hard to keep the semantics of the original program while the toolchain keeps evolving. The issues I have been seen so far: verifier update to tighten the constraints, backend bug fixes, symbol resolution changes, etc.
Debugging: How do you debug the shipped bitcode running on a platform with some other toolchain? Traditionally, you can ship a stripped binary while keeping a version that is contains debug information. You can use that debug information to map the crash report to a specific line. How does that work in the all bitcode world? 
Privacy: How to you hide the sensitive information in the source code away from bitcode? This is includes internal types and function interfaces, debug information (if you decide to ship them) and etc.

* What tools or infrastructure would help make that happen?
It will be great to have standard tooling in LLVM to deal with privacy issue to strip away these informations before shipping. It will be even better if you can restore them later for debugging.
LLD might also helps with some of the problems above by having an integrated tool to ensure consistent symbol resolution. 

Thanks

Steven

> On Oct 17, 2016, at 1:20 PM, Mehdi Amini via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi Vikram,
> 
> It is a bit more that just “efficient (de)serialization” as there is some amount of tradeoff to make between “size” vs “speed” vs “flexibility” (which are all some sort of “efficient”).
> For instance what if we get a faster deserialization but got larger size? That might be an issue for some people who’d like to ship bitcode.
> Another thing is that we may get better speed/size by optimizing for the “streaming” case but losing the flexibility of loading only a subpart of the bitcode.
> 
> This is where I’d be interested (and I’ll pay attention) during the BoF to hear about all the use cases folks are envisioning.
> 
> — 
> Mehdi
>> On Oct 17, 2016, at 6:55 AM, Adve, Vikram Sadanand <vadve at illinois.edu <mailto:vadve at illinois.edu>> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi Mehdi,
>> 
>> Yes, we did see your earlier post.  Efficient (de)serialization is definitely important for both exporting (a la LTO and ThinLTO) and for shipping code as IR.  I expect most use cases of the latter would benefit.
>> 
>> -—Vikram
>> 
>> // Vikram S. Adve
>> // Professor, Department of Computer Science
>> // University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
>> // vadve at illinois.edu <mailto:vadve at illinois.edu>
>> // http://llvm.org <http://llvm.org/>
>> 
>> 
>>> On Oct 14, 2016, at 2:41 PM, Mehdi Amini <mehdi.amini at apple.com <mailto:mehdi.amini at apple.com>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hi,
>>> 
>>> I think as soon as you want to have long-lived IR, the bitcode serialization is a corner stone piece of the system. 
>>> Somehow related, I posted this recently to llvm-dev: http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2016-September/105273.html <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__lists.llvm.org_pipermail_llvm-2Ddev_2016-2DSeptember_105273.html&d=DQMFaQ&c=8hUWFZcy2Z-Za5rBPlktOQ&r=b7uK7dJM4Fx7J_ehsuohEdD-6NdkoLyTwBFfHX-XKcc&m=2ty5V_F2rdMdBJPJVLuXAmeH-EXUvcMMe-ug_QqIqZA&s=byMygV6Z_7kXGJPWr5dD1wi0Gy13O7j0EXYEXDeW5Is&e=> ; I’d be interested how we could leverage a better serialization for various use-cases!
>>> 
>>> Best,
>>> 
>>> — 
>>> Mehdi
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Oct 14, 2016, at 11:32 AM, Will Dietz via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org <mailto:llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Hi LLVM’ers!
>>>> 
>>>> We are hosting a BoF at this year's Dev Meeting on a subject we hope will be of interest to some (many?) of you:
>>>> shipping software (entirely) as LLVM IR.
>>>> 
>>>> You can find our proposal in the meeting schedule online:
>>>> 
>>>> https://llvmdevelopersmeetingbay2016.sched.org/event/8Yzq/shipping-software-as-llvm-ir <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__llvmdevelopersmeetingbay2016.sched.org_event_8Yzq_shipping-2Dsoftware-2Das-2Dllvm-2Dir&d=DQMFaQ&c=8hUWFZcy2Z-Za5rBPlktOQ&r=b7uK7dJM4Fx7J_ehsuohEdD-6NdkoLyTwBFfHX-XKcc&m=2ty5V_F2rdMdBJPJVLuXAmeH-EXUvcMMe-ug_QqIqZA&s=f7oVXD0X8QKcnInXVH2m-a2ddcj04_t-Qnwbj8dUwmA&e=>
>>>> 
>>>> The BoF is scheduled to last 45 minutes, which will go by very quickly!
>>>> To make the best use of the time, we'd like to get a head-start on some of the discussions,
>>>> and get a feel for what topics people are most interested in discussing.
>>>> To start things off, here are a few suggestions for things to discuss.
>>>> Thoughts -- and suggestions for additional topics -- welcome.
>>>> 
>>>> * Do you ship software as IR today? What lessons have you learned?
>>>> * Challenges of shipping software as IR
>>>> * Representing software: Beyond a single module
>>>> * From build systems to LLVM IR: toolchains and more
>>>> * What would you do with a platform where everything was available as LLVM IR?
>>>> * What tools or infrastructure would help make that happen?
>>>> 
>>>> (Some background to explain why we’re interested in this topic.)
>>>> ALLVM: We have a project in our group exploring the benefits of shipping
>>>> *all* software on a system as IR.  We are building a prototype ALLVM system
>>>> that makes it relatively easy to package and ship software in this way.
>>>> We are researching the benefits this could provide for performance and
>>>> for general software development.  We aim to make the ALLVM prototype
>>>> available in open source form to enable other groups to explore these goals.
>>>> Contact us off-list if you’d like to learn more about the ALLVM project.
>>>> 
>>>> ~Will (and Vikram)
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> LLVM Developers mailing list
>>>> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org <mailto:llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>
>>>> http://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev <http://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev>
>>> 
>> 
> 
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