|Version 8 (modified by simonmar, 6 years ago) (diff)|
GHC Source Tree Roadmap: includes/
This directory contains C header files that are included in a GHC distribution. The headers fall into several categories.
These are header files that define an external API to the RTS that can be used by client code. These interfaces are intended to be relatively stable:
- The external FFI api, as required by the FFI spec
- The API for calling into the RTS. Used by the implementation of foreign export calls, but may also be used by external clients.
- This header file defines everything that is visible externally to the RTS. It includes Stg.h and everything in the rts subdirectory.
The canonical definition of certain structures are in C header files. For example, the layout of closures and info tables are defined in the headers Closures.h and InfoTables.h respectivesly. How do we get the information about the layout of these structures to the parts of the system that are not written in C, such as the compiler itself, or the C-- code in the RTS?
Our solution is the C program mkDerivedConstants.c. It #includes the C header files containing the structure definitions, and emits a new C header file containing only #defines that give the byte offsets of important fields in those structures. The program generates the following files:
Take a look at those files in a build tree to see exactly what is generated. These new headers can then be #included into Haskell code or C-- code.
Used when compiling via C
These header files are #included into the .hc file generated by GHC when it compiles Haskell code to C. They are also #included by Rts.h, so the definitions from these files are shared by the RTS code.
These days the amount of stuff included this way is kept to a minimum. In particular, there are no function prototypes: all calls to C functions from .hc files are given types at the call site.
- The top of the hierarchy is Stg.h, which includes everything required by .hc code. Most files #included by Stg.h are in the stg subdirectory.
- Configuration info derived by the configure script.
- Sizes of various basic types (should be in the stg subdirectory, but left here for backwards-compatibility reasons).
- Stuff related to Windows DLLs.
- Global register assignments for this processor.
- Declarations for closures & info tables built-in to the RTS
- "registers" in the virtual machine.
- Atomic memory operations for SMP support
- Tail calls in .hc code.
- Declarations for ticky-ticky counters
- Basic types specific to the virtual machine (eg. StgWord).
The RTS external APIs
The header Rts.h includes all the headers below the rts subdirectory, which together define the RTS external API. Virtually all RTS code #includes Rts.h.
The rts header files are divided into a few directories:
- includes/rts: Most of the external RTS APIs, in separate header files per-subsystem
- includes/rts/storage: Definitions of the layout of heap and stack objects, info tables, structures that define memory areas managed by the GC, and memory management APIs.
- includes/rts/prof: Interfaces and definitions for profiling.
Included into C-- (.cmm) code
- included into .cmm source only; provides useful macros for writing low-level C-- code for GHC.