[llvm-dev] RFC: Building GlobalISel by default

Wed Jan 18 09:13:29 PST 2017

These concerns sound applicable to the situation when GlobalISel is turned
on by default and has an effect on code generation.

While it's a library with tests like any other LLVM component I don't see
these concerns as being significantly greater risk than any other library
in LLVM.

I'm honestly surprised GlobalISel was developed in such a way that it
hasn't been built and tested by default for all developers from Day 1. The
new pass manager and the ORC JIT are examples of this - there was never any
question about when to enable building and testing them. They were built
and tested from the moment they went in tree.

The question of when to turn these things (GlobalISel, New PM, ORC, etc) is
a very different question and one I'd expect to be staged in the way you're
describing, Renato. Provide a flag, off by default. Ask/encourage people to
test it out. Eventually flip the default - encouraging people to unflip
manually and report if they have trouble. Maintain this state until
reported issues are addressed/wait for a grace period, then remove the
flag/old code entirely.

On Sun, Jan 15, 2017 at 5:15 AM Renato Golin via llvm-dev <
llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:

> On 15 January 2017 at 04:24, Michael Kuperstein
> <michael.kuperstein at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Regarding "we shouldn't enable it because it will make the bots slower" -
> > well, yes, but that's just postponing the inevitable. We will enable
> > GlobalISel eventually, and there will probably be a very long time-frame
> > during which both are enabled concurrently.
>
> No magic solutions expected. I just don't want to crank all bots up to
> 11 on day one. We start with the fast bots, when they're happy, we
> move on until we're confident that the whole thing is stable, then we
> make it build by default.
>
> There are two problems here:
>
> 1. Environmental issues.
>
> We do find more of those than we'd hope. Different compilers, linkers,
> libraries that produce not only crashes, but unstable builds and
> unpredictable or irreproducible test failures. The environment on our
> bots are wildly different (on purpose) and dealing with different
> unpredictable issues all at once is something that I'm not willing to
> take on lightly. Due to the nature of buildbots and some of our
> hardware and the fact that virtually all ARM/AArch64 bots are ours,
> this will be something that Linaro will pay the price in full.
>
> 2. Experimental nature.
>
> If the past serves as a guide, experimental features at the core of
> LLVM will be largely independent until they start to merge, when they
> can become a huge issue and be in merging state for months, if not
> years, or worse, never be merged. Right now, we're not at that state,
> we're still largely independent, so your worries regarding the
> development tests (which also hit buildbots at a different pace
> because of the environment issues above), will be lower for now, but
> will increase massively soon enough.
>
> There is the argument that having the bots building means we'll have
> *less* teething issues and the people building GlobalISel (which also
> includes Linaro) will have a lot less work. But there's a cost to be
> paid, and that cost is a lot higher on the ARM/AArch64 side than x86,
> just because most developers use an x86 as their main machine.
>
>
> > Still, as a strawman proposal - would it make sense to add
> > LLVM_BUILD_GLOBAL_ISEL_EXPERIMENTAL, or something of that sort? The more
> > mature ports will build under LLVM_BUILD_GLOBAL_ISEL (which will be
> enabled
> > by default), the less mature ones only under
> > LLVM_BUILD_GLOBAL_ISEL_EXPERIMENTAL (which won't be), and moving a port
> from
> > GLOBAL_ISEL_EXPERIMENTAL to GLOBAL_ISEL would be equivalent to marking a
> > regular backend non-experimental. We can start with just AArch64 in the
> > non-experimental category, and move the others as they become more
> stable.
> > Or is this too much complexity for what we gain?
>
> It is.
>
> We already separate that by not building any other back-end than ARM
> and AArch64. So I think we can do that without the added complexity.
>
> I'm not trying to block the move, I'm just trying to make it smother
> and raise awareness that the cost we pay for any large move is not
> well distributed.
>
> For the past few months I have reverted patches that only broke the
> ARM bots and it was clear on most of those instances which patch was
> to blame, but people didn't bother and after 8, 12 sometimes 24 hours,
> I reverted. This is not a nice place to be in, and given that
> resurgence lately, I am honestly afraid adding more things will make
> it worse.
>
> A red bot can't catch new errors. A slow red bot can go on red for
> weeks (and we have seen it numerous times) because once you fix bug
> #1, #2 has made #3 appear and not be warned.
>
> This is not everyone, and I do appreciate all the people that helped
> us and worried about the breakages, but it's a trend that is
> increasing, not decreasing. Our team is too small to cope with further
> increases, so if the community is willing to do its part, I think we
> can make it work.
>
> But it has to be slow and steady.
>
> cheers,
> --renato
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