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Refactor metadata storage in AOT artifacts #5153

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alexcrichton
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This commit is a reorganization of how metadata is stored in Wasmtime's compiled artifacts. Currently Wasmtime's ELF artifacts have data appended after them to contain metadata about the Engine as well as type information for the module itself. This extra data at the end of the file is ignored by ELF-related utilities generally and is assembled during the module serialization process.

In working on AOT-compiling components, though, I've discovered a number of issues with this:

  • Primarily it's possible to mistakenly change an artifact if it's deserialized and then serialized again. This issue is probably theoretical but the deserialized artifact records the Engine configuration at time of creation but when re-serializing that it serializes the current Engine state, not the original Engine state.

  • Additionally the serialization strategy here is tightly coupled to Module and its serialization format. While this makes sense it is not conducive for future refactorings to use a similar serialization format for components. The engine metadata, for example, does not necessarily need to be tied up with type information.

  • The storage for this extra metadata is a bit wonky by shoving it at the end of the ELF file. The original reason for this was to have a compiled artifact be multiple objects concatenated with each other to support serializing module-linking-using modules. Module linking is no longer a thing and I have since decided that for the component model all compilation artifacts will go into one object file to assist debugability. This means that the extra stick-it-at-the-end is no longer necessary.

To solve these issues this commit splits up the
module/serialization.rs file in two, mostly moving the logic to engine/serialization.rs. The engine serialization logic now handles everything related to Engine compatibility such as targets, compiler flags, wasm features, etc. The module serialization logic is now exclusively interested in type information.

The engine metadata and serialized type information additionally live in sections of the final file now instead of at the end. This means that there are three primary bincode-encoded sections that are parsed on deserializing a file:

  1. The Engine-specific metadata. This will be the same for both modules and components.
  2. The CompiledModuleInfo structure. For core wasm there's just one of these but for the component model there will be multiple, one per core wasm module.
  3. The type information. For core wasm this is a ModuleTypes but for a component this will be a ComponentTypes.

No true functional change is expected from this commit. Binary artifacts might get inflated by a small handful of bytes due to using ELF sections to represent this now.

A related change I made during this commit as well was the plumbing of the is_branch_protection_enabled flag. This is technically Engine-level metadata but I didn't want to plumb it all over the place as was done now, so instead a new section was added to the final binary just for this bti information. This means that it no longer needs to be a parameter to CodeMemory::publish and additionally is more amenable to a Component-is-just-one-object world where no single module owns this piece of metadata.

This commit is a reorganization of how metadata is stored in Wasmtime's
compiled artifacts. Currently Wasmtime's ELF artifacts have data
appended after them to contain metadata about the `Engine` as well as
type information for the module itself. This extra data at the end of
the file is ignored by ELF-related utilities generally and is assembled
during the module serialization process.

In working on AOT-compiling components, though, I've discovered a number
of issues with this:

* Primarily it's possible to mistakenly change an artifact if it's
  deserialized and then serialized again. This issue is probably
  theoretical but the deserialized artifact records the `Engine`
  configuration at time of creation but when re-serializing that it
  serializes the current `Engine` state, not the original `Engine`
  state.

* Additionally the serialization strategy here is tightly coupled to
  `Module` and its serialization format. While this makes sense it is
  not conducive for future refactorings to use a similar serialization
  format for components. The engine metadata, for example, does not
  necessarily need to be tied up with type information.

* The storage for this extra metadata is a bit wonky by shoving it at
  the end of the ELF file. The original reason for this was to have a
  compiled artifact be multiple objects concatenated with each other to
  support serializing module-linking-using modules. Module linking is no
  longer a thing and I have since decided that for the component model
  all compilation artifacts will go into one object file to assist
  debugability. This means that the extra stick-it-at-the-end is no
  longer necessary.

To solve these issues this commit splits up the
`module/serialization.rs` file in two, mostly moving the logic to
`engine/serialization.rs`. The engine serialization logic now handles
everything related to `Engine` compatibility such as targets, compiler
flags, wasm features, etc. The module serialization logic is now
exclusively interested in type information.

The engine metadata and serialized type information additionally live in
sections of the final file now instead of at the end. This means that
there are three primary `bincode`-encoded sections that are parsed on
deserializing a file:

1. The `Engine`-specific metadata. This will be the same for both
   modules and components.
2. The `CompiledModuleInfo` structure. For core wasm there's just one of
   these but for the component model there will be multiple, one per
   core wasm module.
3. The type information. For core wasm this is a `ModuleTypes` but for a
   component this will be a `ComponentTypes`.

No true functional change is expected from this commit. Binary artifacts
might get inflated by a small handful of bytes due to using ELF sections
to represent this now.

A related change I made during this commit as well was the plumbing of
the `is_branch_protection_enabled` flag. This is technically
`Engine`-level metadata but I didn't want to plumb it all over the place
as was done now, so instead a new section was added to the final binary
just for this bti information. This means that it no longer needs to be
a parameter to `CodeMemory::publish` and additionally is more amenable
to a `Component`-is-just-one-object world where no single module owns
this piece of metadata.
@alexcrichton alexcrichton requested a review from pchickey October 28, 2022 21:11
@github-actions github-actions bot added the wasmtime:api Related to the API of the `wasmtime` crate itself label Oct 28, 2022
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@pchickey
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Looks like there is just one minor problem with cranelift-free mode.

@alexcrichton alexcrichton enabled auto-merge (squash) October 29, 2022 17:01
@alexcrichton alexcrichton merged commit 434fbf2 into bytecodealliance:main Oct 29, 2022
@alexcrichton alexcrichton deleted the refactor-compilation-metadata branch October 29, 2022 17:13
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