Re: [C++-sig] EXTERNAL: Re: Odd dlopen behavior

2012-02-01 Thread Niall Douglas
On 31 Jan 2012 at 16:44, Davidson, Josh wrote:

> Ok, well I did figure out the discrepancy between these extensions and
> previous extensions that have been built that required setting
> RTLD_GLOBAL.  What I'm doing for these extensions is instead of building
> in all of the original C++ code AND the Py++ generated code into the
> extension, I'm only building in the Py++ generated sources  and linking
> an existing shared library containing the original C++ definitions.  Is
> this non-standard or bad practice?  

The big problem with shared objects exporting lots of symbols was 
that the Linux runtime shared object linker used to have O(N^3) 
complexity. As a result, every time you ran a program linking to a 
ginormous shared object you'd get a pause of several seconds as it 
bound the symbols.

Now, some years ago with KDE and OpenOffice taking forever to load, 
some eyeballs were turned onto this problem and I know they were 
going to get it down to O(N^2). There was speak of replacing bits 
with O(N), but it would introduce ABI compat problems among other 
things. Another angle was making it use multiple cores. My attention 
ended up moving elsewhere so I have no idea what has happened since. 
It could still be O(N^2), it could be O(N) or somewhere in between.

> One issue with this is I'm now forced to deliver both the Python
> extension shared libraries and the original shared libraries.  Not a
> huge deal, but it does add a little work on the deployment and
> maintenance end. 

On systems with sane DLL designs like Windows and Mac OS X, you'd 
generally keep the Python bindings separate from the library being 
bound as it's cleaner and more self-contained. You can also issue 
smaller self-container ABI compatible releases as hotfixes etc etc.

On the insanity that is ELF, generally you can make inter-SO problems 
go away by linking everything into a ginormous monolithic SO. However 
you used to get that O(N^3)/O(N^2) problem I mentioned and maybe you 
still do. So, sometimes you just have to get your hands dirty and 
start with hack scripts which post-process the SOs to make their 
symbol tables sane, or write your own SO loader and binder 
implementation using dlopen() et al and bypass the system linker 
altogether :)

Sadly the ISO standards work to enforce sanity in shared libraries 
across all platforms got dropped from C11 and C++11, but I certainly 
will try to push that forward again for C11 TR1 along with a few 
other items on my shopping list (I'm the ISO SC22 convenor for 
Ireland, though Ireland is only an observer). The problem, as always, 
is a lack of sponsorship or funding by anyone who cares enough to 
have the problem fixed properly - and it is a difficult problem to 
get correct. In the end, as much as these problems are annoying and 
cost time to people like you, the cost of fixing them isn't seen as 
business relevant by those with the resources.

HTH,
Niall

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Re: [C++-sig] EXTERNAL: Re: Odd dlopen behavior

2012-02-01 Thread Davidson, Josh
Neil, great information, but I did track this problem down to a quirk with Py++.

I've had a great deal of trouble finding a reliable way to actually write 
modules with module_builder.  Originally, I had been using split_module but 
I've run into several cases where it goes off in the weeds and tries to write 
files that exceed the maximum file length.  Generally, this occurs when 
wrapping classes that go nuts on specialization since module_builder uses the 
name of the class in the file bindings file.  Here is one quick, extreme 
example where this occurs when trying to wrap members of boost:
File "C:\Users\davidsj2\workspace\SimCommon\src\Python\goes\build\bindings.py", 
line 325, in _generate
files = mb.split_module(self._bindingsDir)
  File 
"c:\Python26\lib\site-packages\pyplusplus\module_builder\boost_python_builder.py",
 line 375, in split_module
, encoding=self.encoding)
  File "c:\Python26\lib\site-packages\pyplusplus\file_writers\__init__.py", 
line 37, in write_multiple_files
mfs.write()
  File 
"c:\Python26\lib\site-packages\pyplusplus\file_writers\multiple_files.py", line 
406, in write
self.split_classes()
  File 
"c:\Python26\lib\site-packages\pyplusplus\file_writers\multiple_files.py", line 
307, in split_classes
map( self.split_class, class_creators )
  File 
"c:\Python26\lib\site-packages\pyplusplus\file_writers\multiple_files.py", line 
294, in split_class
self.split_class_impl( class_creator )
  File 
"c:\Python26\lib\site-packages\pyplusplus\file_writers\multiple_files.py", line 
268, in split_class_impl
, self.create_function_code( function_name ) ) )
  File 
"c:\Python26\lib\site-packages\pyplusplus\file_writers\multiple_files.py", line 
61, in write_file
writer.writer_t.write_file( fpath, content, self.files_sum_repository, 
self.encoding )
  File "c:\Python26\lib\site-packages\pyplusplus\file_writers\writer.py", line 
150, in write_file
f = codecs.open( fpath, 'w+b', encoding )
  File "c:\Python26\lib\codecs.py", line 881, in open
file = __builtin__.open(filename, mode, buffering)
IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 
'C:\\Users\\davidsj2\\workspace\\SimCommon\\build\\win64\\pybindings\\goes\\boost\\dividable2_less__boost_scope_date_time_scope_date_duration_less__boost_scope_date_time_scope_duration_traits_adapted__greater__comma__int_comma__boost_scope_detail_scope_empty_base_less__boost_scope_date_time_scope_date_duration_less__boost_scope_date_time_scope_duration_traits_adapted__greater___greater___greater_.pypp.hpp'
make: *** [all] Error 1

After finding references to this problem as far back as 2006, I decided to 
switch over to balanced_split_module.  This has its own set of problems.  The 
first is that it is highly prone to divide by zero errors.  One quick way to 
reproduce this issue is to wrap one class and specify a split count of 2.  
Obviously not a wise combo, but it's an easy error case that Py++ should handle.

So anyways, the root of *this* problem is how balanced_split_module creates its 
registration functions.  For each extension, it creates one register function 
for each file it writes in the form:  void register_classes_()Obviously, 
these collide when you create more than one extension using 
balanced_split_module and enable RTLD_GLOBAL.  One quick solution to this 
problem would be to prepend the extension name to the name of the registration 
functions, e.g.: _register_classes_  Since the module name is used 
to name the files, its easily accessible and would solve a lot of problems.  Of 
course, if you have modules with the same name in different packages you would 
run into this again.

Josh

-Original Message-
From: cplusplus-sig-bounces+josh.davidson=lmco@python.org 
[mailto:cplusplus-sig-bounces+josh.davidson=lmco@python.org] On Behalf Of 
Niall Douglas
Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2012 10:46 AM
To: Development of Python/C++ integration
Subject: Re: [C++-sig] EXTERNAL: Re: Odd dlopen behavior

On 31 Jan 2012 at 16:44, Davidson, Josh wrote:

> Ok, well I did figure out the discrepancy between these extensions and 
> previous extensions that have been built that required setting 
> RTLD_GLOBAL.  What I'm doing for these extensions is instead of 
> building in all of the original C++ code AND the Py++ generated code 
> into the extension, I'm only building in the Py++ generated sources  
> and linking an existing shared library containing the original C++ 
> definitions.  Is this non-standard or bad practice?

The big problem with shared objects exporting lots of symbols was that the 
Linux runtime shared object linker used to have O(N^3) complexity. As a result, 
every time you ran a program linking to a ginormous shared object you'd get a 
pause of several seconds as it bound the symbols.

Now, some years ago with KDE and OpenOffice taking forever to load, some 
eyeballs were turned onto this problem and I know they were going to get it 
down to O(N^2). There was speak of replacin