Hello everyone,
for quite some time I've been working on a portable mmap/virtual memory
library and I've finally found enough time to bring it out of the 'my
internal litle tool' state into something presentable:
https://github.com/psiha/mmap (C++14 currently).
I would now kindly ask fellow devs for opinions (on the good, the bad,
the ugly and the future;)
First let me answer the basic questions (i.e. on motivation and scope)...
Q&A:
(1) Why?
Considering Boost already offers two related solutions
* Interprocess:
http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/release/doc/html/interprocess/sharedmemorybetw...
* Iostreams:
http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/release/libs/iostreams/doc/classes/mapped_file...
why do we want a new one?
Even if the two mentioned solutions were adequate, the problem domain
would still merit a separate, dedicated library merely considering its
complexity (which will become apparent in later points).
(I suspect Ion would agree here considering he actually authored a
related standardization proposal:)
(2) Why a completely new library instead of a repackaging of existing
functionality?
I'm not satisfied with (a) the API semantics/design, (b) the API
'power'/library capabilities (c) and the implementation efficiency/overhead.
a) Insistence on POSIX semantics: that shared memory objects have to be
persistent (kernel lifetime) and resizable while not everyone wants or
needs this (https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/4827). This has
implications both:
- in the interface (requiring manual cleanup guards, additional platform
specific shm types like windows_shared_memory)
- and the overhead of the library (emulating shm with mapped files on
major platforms that do not offer full POSIX compliance: Windows, OSX,
iOS and Android)
MMAP solves this with one class template 'named_memory' and policies:
https://github.com/psiha/mmap/blob/master/include/boost/mmap/mappable_object...
so the user can choose:
named_memory, named_memory or any
other combination and the library chooses the best implementation.
On POSIX, scoped semantics are achieved with a SEM_UNDO-enabled SysV
semaphore acting as a kernel/system-global reference counter (which is
then also used for automatic cleanup of shm zombies left by
killed/crashed processes).
On Windows the user can choose the Win32 backend (file emulation) or the
NativeNT (not yet finished/commited) backend (with native persistence
and resizability).
b)
- lack of a meta layer (e.g. so one can ask is_mappable or
is_mappableboost::filesystem::path, is_mappable<HANDLE> etc...)
- lack of related utility functions, for example:
-- map_read_only_file( path ) which will open the file for reading,
query its size, create a read only file mapping and map/return a read
only view of the file
-- guarded_operation( view, operation, error_handler ) - execute
operation wrapped in SEH(Windows)/scoped signal handler(POSIX) guards
that will catch access violations (e.g. when mmaping network files) and
gracefully execute error_handler (with the faulting address as the
parameter)
https://github.com/psiha/mmap/blob/master/include/boost/mmap/mapped_view/gua...
- in MMAP the mapped_view object (which should probably be renamed to
just 'view' considering the enclosing mmap namespace) is just a RAII
wrapper around an iterator_range therby providing the standard
begin/end(), front/back(), operator[], etc. interface (as opposed to a
get_data(), get_size() like interface)
- general (not specific to mapping) virtual memory functionality (to be
discussed in a separate point, MMAP also completely lacks this currently)
- MMAP offers a comprehensive 'flags' system (e.g.
https://github.com/psiha/mmap/blob/master/include/boost/mmap/flags/flags.hpp)
for everything from object-level and system-level access privileges,
over object parent-child inheritance to system life-time and
access-pattern optimisation hints. Quite some time was invested in this
area to produce a normalized interface that works for all objects
(files, mappings...) while producing (near)zero adjustment codegen.
Flags are 'packed'/grouped in structs (e.g. struct access_privileges
with object_access, child_access and systen_access members) with public
members so that, after flags are created with a factory function (a
portable API) the flags can be further tweaked for a specific platform
(e.g. adding some FreeBSD specific mmap hint which isn't covered by the
portable/documented MMAP API)
c) It is my view (if not a "self evident truth";D) that libraries that
merely wrap existing low level functionality (such as OS or CRT APIs)
should allow you to write code that is safe, portable and looks
reasonably nice while at the same time incurs (near)zero overhead (i.e.
with a reasonably intelligent compiler, produces codegen that looks
nearly the same as it would had one used the underlying API directly) -
and the existing solutions fail that. In the two related tickets I went
into more detail on this so I'll avoid spaming this post by repeating
those objections and analysis. Rather I'll present a trivial example
that demonstrates what wannabeboost::mmap currently produces with a
decent compiler, https://gist.github.com/psiha/c0823fefc01fa3b39662:
#define BOOST_MMAP_HEADER_ONLY
#include
#include
int main( int /*argc*/, char * /*argv*/[] ) noexcept
{
auto maybe_foo_view( boost::mmap::map_read_only_file( "foo" )() );
if ( !maybe_foo_view )
return static_cast<int>( maybe_foo_view.error() );
if ( maybe_foo_view->empty() )
return -1;
return (*maybe_foo_view)[ 0 ];
}
with Xcode 7.2.1 Clang -O3 build for x64 produces
https://gist.github.com/psiha/f92a7b8a93c5ce1736ae
(notice how the error handling is also correctly detected as such and
placed at the end of the function, after the main return...)
Besides not using shared_ptr pimpls or saving paths in std::strings as a
'nice to have' (YAGNI!:), part of the way this codegen is achieved is
through the use of (also wannabe) Boost.Err
(https://github.com/psiha/err) which makes it possible to avoid EH (in
such simple/'localised' examples). It is also the reason for the
somewhat awkward (optional<>-like) syntax:
- map_read_only_file() returns a
mmap::fallible_resultmmap::mapped_view (an alias for
err::fallible_result, an "rvalue-only" type)
- which is converted/'saved'/'pinned' into a result_or_error (the
maybe_foo_view variable) with the additional operator() call
- the !maybe_foo_view checks whether the call succeeded or the
returned object contains an error
- if error return the error (errno) code
- else check if the view/file is empty (optional<>-like syntax for
accessing the contained object through the -> and * operators)
- else return the value of the first character in the file.
Boost.Err was recently discussed on this list so I'll skip most of that
now, let me just say that it also supports classic EH coding style (it
auto adapts, no need for reconfiguration, macros or anything like that),
i.e. the above code can be rewritten as:
int main( int /*argc*/, char * /*argv*/[] ) noexcept
{
using namespace boost::mmap;
try
{
read_only_mapped_view const foo_view( map_read_only_file( "foo" ) );
if ( foo_view.empty() )
return -1;
return foo_view[ 0 ];
}
catch ( std::runtime_error const & )
{
return error::get();
}
}
...now let me reverse the Q&A direction ;)
3. Library scope: currently the library covers the topic of memory
mapping (of filesystem objects and virtual memory), however I think that
'the final' library should cover all resonably portable aspects of
virtual memory (and be called something like vm with mmap as a nested
namespace), tackling thingies such as:
- process working set
- portable low memory event handling, madvise, memfd...
- prefetching, locking/unlocking virtual memory to/from physical memory
(e.g. for realtime sensitive data)
- allocators capable of contiguous resizing (for implementing realloc or
vector.resize() that does no copying or moving, simply maps new pages at
the end of the current allocation)
- https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2012/07/21/the-magic-ring-buffer
...
does anyone have an objection/different approach to this?
4. Windows offers/has/uses the concept of an intermediate "mapping"
object (i.e. you don't create a mapped view of a file, rather you create
a 'mapping' of a file and then a view of the mapping). This of course
complicates things but also gives more power, e.g. you can have a r/w
file open and create a mapping (or several mappings) of it that only
covers a part of its size and has stricter (e.g read only at
object/process level) or wider access privileges (e.g. on the system
level, only the parent process/user can access the file but the mapping
is accesible by everyone). Boost.MMAP retains this distinction in its
API (mapping vs mapped_view classes)...comments/thoughts on this please?
5. The above (Windows specific) 'mapping' concept makes it possible to
create "named file mappings" (so that the object gets a system global
name, like a shared memory object) which then another process can open
by its name, erasing the difference between file mappings and vm
mappings for client processes (kind of like the interface vs hidden
implementation distinction). MMAP uses this on Windows for
file-backed/'emulated' shared memory (e.g. that which needs persistence
and/or resizabilty) - it is created named so that client processes can
open and access it as 'normal'/native Windows shared memory.
It might actually be possible to make this at least partially portable
to POSIX systems that use virtual filesystems for implementing shared
memory (e.g. Linux which uses /dev/shm) where we could symlink the file
to the shm filesystem directory...(unfortunately I have no way of
testing this as I have no Linux machine setup, I develop only for
Windows, OSX, iOS and Android)...does this make any sense/would it be
worth the hassle (i.e. ease any real world problems)?
6. The security part of the 'flags system' models the POSIX API: for
named (system level) created objects you specify the permissions for the
'user', 'group' and 'world'. 'Behind the scenes', on Windows, 'user'
maps to the user that created the process, 'group' maps to all groups
that the 'user' belongs to and 'world' maps to the Everyone group..?
When not using the predefined privilege/permission levels [e.g.
process_default, unrestricted, nix_default (644)] things are currently
pretty verbose here:
namespace flags = boost::mmap::flags;
using ap = flags::access_privileges;
auto const default_privileges
(
ap::system::user ( ap::all ) |
ap::system::group( ap::read ) |
ap::system::world( ap::read )
);
I have a prototype implementation that shortens this with user defined
literals, so that one can write something like "rwxr-xr--"_perm...All in
all, this thing looks like it merits a separate library in its own right...
7. Windows has another quirk up its sleeve: global vs local session
objects - if you want to create a shared memory object visible across
terminal sessions (this includes a server process running as a service,
thereby in session 0, and client process created by a logged on user,
or/also using the NativeNT backend/API to create a native persistent
shared memory object which requires that it be created in the global
session '0') you have to prefix its name with "Global\" (and have admin
privileges)... I'm still pondering how to model this in the API or
whether it should be automatically handled at all, e.g. whether to
deduce if the Global\ prefix should be automatically added (based on the
process privileges, type and access privileges of shm object being
created etc) or leave it up to the user to know "if I'm running on
Windows and want to do this and this I have to use the Global\ prefix"...
There's more but the openning post is already too long so I'l stop...for
now ;)
--
"What Huxley teaches is that in the age of advanced technology,
spiritual devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a
smiling face than from one whose countenance exudes suspicion and hate."
Neil Postman
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