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This PR sets up tagged pointers for CPython. The general idea is to create a separate struct _PyStackRef for everything on the evaluation stack to store the bits. This forces the C compiler to warn us if we try to cast things or pull things out of the struct directly. Only for free threading: We tag the low bit if something is deferred - that means we skip incref and decref operations on it. This behavior may change in the future if Mark's plans to defer all objects in the interpreter loop pans out. This implies a strict stack reference discipline is required. ALL incref and decref operations on stackrefs must use the stackref variants. It is unsafe to untag something then do normal incref/decref ops on it. The new incref and decref variants are called dup and close. They mimic a "handle" API operating on these stackrefs. Please read Include/internal/pycore_stackref.h for more information! --------- Co-authored-by: Mark Shannon <9448417+markshannon@users.noreply.github.com> |
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| README.md | ||
| _llvm.py | ||
| _schema.py | ||
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| _targets.py | ||
| _writer.py | ||
| build.py | ||
| ignore-tests-emulated-linux.txt | ||
| mypy.ini | ||
| template.c | ||
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README.md
The JIT Compiler
This version of CPython can be built with an experimental just-in-time compiler. While most everything you already know about building and using CPython is unchanged, you will probably need to install a compatible version of LLVM first.
Installing LLVM
The JIT compiler does not require end users to install any third-party dependencies, but part of it must be built using LLVM1. You are not required to build the rest of CPython using LLVM, or even the same version of LLVM (in fact, this is uncommon).
LLVM version 18 is required. Both clang and llvm-readobj need to be installed and discoverable (version suffixes, like clang-18, are okay). It's highly recommended that you also have llvm-objdump available, since this allows the build script to dump human-readable assembly for the generated code.
It's easy to install all of the required tools:
Linux
Install LLVM 18 on Ubuntu/Debian:
wget https://apt.llvm.org/llvm.sh
chmod +x llvm.sh
sudo ./llvm.sh 18
Install LLVM 18 on Fedora Linux 40 or newer:
sudo dnf install 'clang(major) = 18' 'llvm(major) = 18'
macOS
Install LLVM 18 with Homebrew:
brew install llvm@18
Homebrew won't add any of the tools to your $PATH. That's okay; the build script knows how to find them.
Windows
Install LLVM 18 by searching for it on LLVM's GitHub releases page, clicking on "Assets", downloading the appropriate Windows installer for your platform (likely the file ending with -win64.exe), and running it. When installing, be sure to select the option labeled "Add LLVM to the system PATH".
Alternatively, you can use chocolatey:
choco install llvm --version=18.1.6
Dev Containers
If you are working CPython in a Codespaces instance, there's no need to install LLVM as the Fedora 40 base image includes LLVM 18 out of the box.
Building
For PCbuild-based builds, pass the new --experimental-jit option to build.bat.
For all other builds, pass the new --enable-experimental-jit option to configure.
Otherwise, just configure and build as you normally would. Cross-compiling "just works", since the JIT is built for the host platform.
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Clang is specifically needed because it's the only C compiler with support for guaranteed tail calls (
musttail), which are required by CPython's continuation-passing-style approach to JIT compilation. Since LLVM also includes other functionalities we need (namely, object file parsing and disassembly), it's convenient to only support one toolchain at this time. ↩︎