Compiler Milestone 3

[SupunS]

Needed for realistic FT

In order of complexity and priority:

• Compiler + VM:

  • Function expressions (closure functions) (needed for meta data / view resolver?) @turbolent

• Entitlements (subset needed for FT; only access modifier?) @SupunS

  • Needs entitlements in static types (might need storage migration; alternative: use sema type)

• Standard library functionality / function injection (mostly, no work in compiler / VM. Should be fairly easy:

  • Type
  • Address
  • Account.Storage (e.g. copy)
  • Account.Capabilities (e.g. borrow)
  • Number conversion functions (e.g. UFix64())

• Computed fields:

  • Contract account field
  • Resource owner (uuid?) field

Tech-debt

• Re-enable compiler tests #3758
• Make existing interpreter values reusable in VM #3693
• Refactor type casting/conversions and re-use in both interpreter and VM #3770
• Research how to run existing interpreter and runtime tests with the compiler/VM (focus on interpreter tests, runtime tests later)
• Compiler test for imports (already has VM test)
• Add diagram of compilation “pipeline” to internal docs #3722

Optimizations

• Disable pre-loading types in the VM for executable (unnecessarily loads all types, even if they are not used)
• Maybe produce an un-encoded/decoded executable directly from the compiler, to avoid encoding-decoding times (e.g: for static types, etc).

Done

• Boolean operators @turbolent
• Bitwise operators @turbolent
• Conditional expression @turbolent
• Unary operators (*, -) @turbolent
• Transaction pre/post conditions @SupunS
• Force-unwrap @turbolent

[turbolent]

Questions / discussion points:

• Value / stdlib code reuse:
  • Refactor existing code and make it reusable?
  • Copy/reimplement temporarily? End goal: get rid of interpreter.
    • Concerns: 100% re-implementation.
    • Also switch interpreter to use "VM values" (maybe better than refactoring to make it reusable?)
  • Easy for primitive values, harder for more complex data structures, most difficult is stdlib (mostly in stdlib, account storage, cap cons, etc.)
• How to "re-use" tests?
  • Switch with flag
  • Keep tests as-is, convert from interpreter value to VM value and back (for result)

[turbolent]

Created #3804 for the remaining items / next milestone