Software object library selection

[0001] This application is a continuation-in-part of application Ser. No. 09/503,485, filed Feb. 14, 2000 now abandoned, the entire content of which is hereby incorporated by reference in this application.

[0002] 1. Field of the Invention

[0003] This invention relates to the field of data processing systems. More particularly, this invention relates to techniques for generating machine code entities based upon source code entities using libraries of machine code entities.

[0004] 2. Description of the Prior Art

[0005] It is known to provide software development tools including a plurality of libraries of machine code entities. The different libraries of machine code entities cater for different build options that may be selected by a user. As an example, a user may wish to use the same source code entities to generate machine code entities for differing target processor instruction set versions or for target processors having different hardware capabilities. The machine code entities within the different libraries are matched to the different build options to which they relate to produce the most efficient processing for those build options.

[0006] The number of user specified options in such systems is increasing. As a consequence, the number of possible different combinations of build options is rapidly increasing to become a large number of possible combinations

[0007] It is desirable that the machine code entity libraries provided in a software development tool system should be usable with all possible build options that a user might select. One solution might be to provide a software library for every possible combination of build options. However, the large number of possible combinations of build options make this impractical. A related problem is how a user is to select the correct library to use from among a large number of libraries.

[0008] Viewed from one aspect the present invention provides apparatus for generating a group of machine code entities for execution upon a target data processing apparatus from a group of source code entities, each source code entity having at least one build option parameter, said apparatus for generating comprising:

• • [0009] (i) library selector forming logic responsive to said at least one build option parameter of each source code entity for forming a library selector, wherein.
    • [0010] (a) build option parameters of each source code entity are combined in accordance with lattice theory whereby each build option parameter has a value indicative of position within a partially ordered lattice chain representing relative execution environment requirements for that build option parameter, and
    • [0011] (b) said library selector is formed with components corresponding to a limiting level of execution environment requirements among said group of source code entities;
  • [0012] (ii) library selecting logic responsive to said library selector for selecting, from among a plurality of libraries of machine code entities, a selected library of machine code entities having a best level of execution environment requirements compatible with said limiting level of execution environment requirements indicated by said library selector; and
  • [0013] (iii) machine code entity generating logic for generating said group of machine code entities from machine code entities within said selected library of machine code entities to dependence upon said group of source code entities.

[0014] The invention recognizes that lattice theory techniques can be applied to the characterization of build option parameters to rigorously model execution environment requirements so that a library selector may be generated for a group of source code entities representing the maximum execution environment requirements of that group of source code entities (object code) and then this library selector may be used to identify a suitable library of machine code entities (such as files, sections or symbols) This rigorous approach allows the selection of the most suitable library of machine code entities (for generating an executable image) to be automated whilst ensuring that the selected library will be compatible with the execution environment requirements and be an efficient library.

[0015] The use of lattice theory modeling techniques for the execution environment requirements of the source code entities also allows incompatibilities between source code entities to be identified in a rigorous manner.

[0016] In preferred embodiments incompatibility is indicated by the detection of a lattice top in one or more of the independent components of the library selecting vector.

[0017] In order to reduce the total number of libraries that need to be provided preferred embodiments of the invention embed more than one minor variant of some machine code entities within a library with the final selection of the machine code entity being made amongst these minor variants using the build option parameters for the specific source code entity requiring that machine code entity. See Section 3.3.1 of the attached Appendix.

[0018] It will be appreciated that the source code entities could be formed from many different computer programing languages, However, the present invention is particularly well suited to systems in which the source code entities are formed from C or C++ or assembly language source code entities for the target data processor.

[0019] The different build options that may be specified by a user of the software development tools include an instruction set identifier for the target data processing system, the identification of any optional instruction processing hardware present (e.g. a floating point unit, a vector floating point unit etc), the endianness, position independence, stack checking status, memory system capabilities and procedure call options.

[0020] The invention is particularly well suited to systems in which those build options giving rise to the greatest demands on the execution environment have significant advantages (such as greater performance or smaller size) since the system allows the library best matched to those more demanding options to be selected rather than the most compatible library that might be significantly sub-optimal in that execution environment.

[0021] Viewed from another aspect the present invention provides a method of generating a group of machine code entities for execution upon a target data processing apparatus from a group of source code entities, each source code entity having at least one build option parameter, said method of generating comprising the steps of:

• • [0022] (i) in response to said at least one build option parameter of each source code entity, forming a library selector, wherein:
    • [0023] (a) build option parameters of each source code entity are combined in accordance with lattice theory whereby each build option parameter has a value indicative of position within a partially ordered lattice chain representing relative execution environment requirements for that build option parameter, and
    • [0024] (b) said library selector is formed with components corresponding to a limiting level of execution environment requirements among said group of source code entities;
  • [0025] (ii) in response to said library selector, selecting, from among a plurality of libraries of machine code entities, a selected library of machine code entities having a best level of execution environment requirements compatible with said limiting level of execution environment requirements indicated by said library selector; and
  • [0026] (iii) generating said group of machine code entities from machine code entities within said selected library of machine code objects in dependence upon said group of source code entities.

[0027] Viewed from a further aspect the present invention provides a computer program carrier, e.g., such as a computer readable medium, bearing (storing) a computer program for controlling a data processing apparatus to perform a method of generating a group of machine code entities for execution upon a target data processing apparatus from a group of source code entities, each source code entity having at least one build option parameter, said method of generating comprising the steps of:

• • [0028] (i) in response to said at least one build option parameter of each source code entity, forming a library selector, wherein:
    • [0029] (a) build option parameters of each source code entity are combined in accordance with lattice theory whereby each build option parameter has a value indicative of position within a partially ordered lattice chain representing relative execution environment requirements for that build option parameter, and
    • [0030] (b) said library selector is formed with components corresponding to a limiting level of execution environment requirements among said group of source code entities;
  • [0031] (ii) in response to said library selector, selecting, from among a plurality of libraries of machine code entities, a selected library of machine code entities having a best level of execution environment requirements compatible with said limiting level of execution environment requirements indicated by said library selector; and
  • [0032] (iii) generating said group of machine code entities from machine code entities within said selected library of machine code entities in dependence upon said group of source code entities.

[0033] Viewed from a still further aspect the present invention provides a method of forming a set of libraries of machine code entities for use in generating a group of machine code entities for execution upon a target data processing apparatus from a group of source code entities, each source code entity having at least one build option parameter, said method of forming comprising tie steps of:

• • [0034] (i) associating a library selector with each library of machine code entities, wherein:
    • [0035] (a) supported build option parameters for each machine code entity within a library are combined in accordance with lattice theory whereby each build option parameter has a value indicative of position within a partially ordered lattice chain representing relative execution environment requirements for that build option parameter, and
    • [0036] (b) said library selector is formed with components corresponding to a limiting level of execution environment requirements needed by said library of machine code objects; and
  • [0037] (ii) determining from said library selectors that at least one compatible library of machine code entities is present for each possible combination of build option parameters of said source code entities.

[0038] This aspect of the invention exploits the ability of a lattice theory model of execution environment requirements (compatibility) to enable a rigorous determination to be made that at least one library that will work is provided for every possible combination of build option parameters.

[0039] The above, and other objects, features and advantages of this invention will be apparent from the following detailed description of illustrative embodiments which is to be read in connection with the accompanying drawings.

[0044] FIG. 1 illustrates the use of a software development tool system for forming machine code for a target processing apparatus from source code. A software developer may write a mixed program comprising some C or C++ source code 10 and some assembly language source code 12. This source code 10, 12 together with the user selected build option parameters are supplied as inputs to a compiler 14 and an assembler 16 respectively. If a user does not specify the build option parameters to be used with a particular source code object, then the compiler 14 or the assembler 16 may use its own default values for those particular build option parameters.

[0045] Specifically, in this embodiment all objects have “build option parameters” associated with them. These are derived in 3 ways:

• • [0046] Objects built by attribute aware object producers have a BuildAttributes$ . . . string. Entries in it correspond to:
    • [0047] Options explicitly requested by a user.
    • [0048] Options implicitly assumed by the object producer.
  • [0049] Objects built by attribute-oblivious object producers (older releases of the SDT (Software Development Toolkit) for example), nonetheless get build option parameters associated with them based on what can be inferred about their build options from, for example, the library requests they make.

[0050] The whole system has been designed so that, in general, if an object is completely devoid of build attributes—built by an alien, attribute-oblivious object producer—it will link in the most common modes of usage (most common choices of build option parameters) by virtue of have a “bottom” as the relevant components of its selecting vector. Of course, such linkage is at the user's risk, and little can be diagnosed about it, so it cannot be guaranteed to produce a working binary!

[0051] The compiler 14 and assembler 16 translate the input source code 10, 12 to source code entities 18, 20 (i.e. the entity derived from the corresponding source code such as a file, section or symbol). These groups of source code entities 18, 20 represent the primitive structures from which the computer program as a whole is formed. The groups of source code entities 18, 20 have their respective build options associated with them. In the context of a linker a “source code entity” represents an entity explicitly specified as an input by the user (or by an IDE or “make” system acting as the user's agent), in contrast to entities located automatically by the linker.

[0052] The groups of source code entities 18, 20 are supplied as one input to a linker 22. In relation to the mechanism of at least the preferred embodiments of this invention the linker 22 serves the function of identifying an appropriate library of machine code entities within a collection of libraries 24 and then matching the different source code entities to the appropriate machine code entities within the selected library. The output from the linker 22 is a machine code image 25 (group of machine code entities) that forms an executable program upon the target processor apparatus.

[0053] FIG. 2 schematically illustrates a theoretical example target processor apparatus. A processor core 26, such as an ARM core produced by ARM Limited of Cambridge, England, is provided at the heart of the system. The processor core 26 will have a particular instruction set architecture that it supports, e.g. the ARM Instruction Set Architecture Version 4. In the illustrated system a vector floating point unit 28 is provided in association with the processor core 26 to provide hardware support for vector floating point instructions. The memory system 30 coupled to the processor core 26 is in this instance a burst mode memory. The memory includes a stack memory area 32, which for the program being produced, has been specified by the programmer to be an unchecked stack memory. The data storage and transfer between the processor 26 and the memory 30 is big-endian.

[0054] It will be appreciated that a crude software development tool system could simply provide one library of machine code entities for each major variant assuming the least possible execution environment requirement build options for all minor variants covered by that library, e.g. assume the earliest instruction set architecture knowing that later instruction set architectures will be compatible with this. Compatibility lattices tend to be broad and shallow, so there are many incompatible major variants that are least in the lattice (i.e. above bottom, but not above any other non-bottom element). As an example, there is no least element between big-endian and little-endian, libraries for each must be provided if both are to be supported.

[0055] A crude software development system that provided only one major variant library would necessarily have to deny build options able to create other major variant. Thus, a system that provided no vector floating point library would have to preclude generating vector floating point instructions that could take advantage of the vector floating point unit 28.

[0056] Another example is that the processor core 26 in the illustrated system supports Version 4 of the instruction set architecture. A later more sophisticated instruction set architecture, namely, Version 5, is supported by different processor cores. If Version 5 were supported by the processor core 26, then more efficient and desirable machine code entities could be used. However, such code would not run on the illustrated target processor. The lattice theory compatibility modelling allows a library containing Version 4 machine code entities to be selected thereby making the most of the capabilities of the system by not merely reverting to a less desirable Version 3 instruction set architecture assumption that would work in all cases.

[0057] As an alternative the system may be arranged such that one major variant is selected that contains Version 3 Version 4 and Version 5 machine code entities (minor variants). The lattice theoretic modelling allows the most desirable minor variant to be chosen

[0058] It should be noted that minor variants are “interface compatible”, i.e. there is some execution environment in which any of them could be used, e.g. in the above example a Version 5 environment. Major variants are “interface incompatible”, i.e. there is no execution environment in which the variants are interchangable, e.g. big-endian and little-endian are not mixed within an environment.

[0059] The stack memory 32 has been user specified as unchecked. If some of the source code objects assume a checked stack, then the linker 22 will flag all incompatibility before the machine code is produced. The user can then adjust the build option parameters or source code accordingly to rectify this incompatibility.

[0060] FIG. 3 schematically illustrates a flow diagram showing the operation of the linker 22 of FIG. 1 (the linker is in practice embodied as software controlling a general purpose computer). Each machine code entity has an associated attribute vector encoding its build option parameters in accordance with a lattice theory model of their compatibility and relative desirability. At step 34 the linker 22 joins (in the lattice of all build option related attributes) the input attributes of all of the source code entities. This joined vector becomes the library selector (e.g. using a library selecting vector or a list mechanism) as it specifies the maximum execution environment requirements of the source code entities.

[0061] Step 36 serves to identify any incompatibilities amongst the build option parameters specified. As an example, if one source code entity specified an unchecked stack and another a checked stack, then this incompatibility would need to be resolved before the machine code program could be properly produced. In practice incompatibilities might be detected by detecting within the library selecting vector a lattice top in some of its independent components.

[0062] Step 38 uses the library selecting vector produced at step 34 to select the particular library of machine code entities within the library collection 24 that is to be used. The particular library selected is the one having the best level of component vector values that are compatible with the component values for the library selecting vector produced at step 32.

[0063] Within each library various minor variants may be provided for by providing different machine code entities for those different minor variants. These are detected and selected at step 40.

[0064] Finally at step 42 the executable machine code is generated using the machine code entities from the selected library of machine code entities including selected minor variants.

[0065] An alternative view of the invention is set out in the following Appendix.

[0066] It will be appreciated that the library selecting vector discussed above could have a wide variety of different forms and may be properly considered to be a library selector. The library selector could utilise various coding mechanisms, such as, for example, a list mechanism as will be familiar to those skilled in this technical field.

[0067] There are circumstances where the maximum level of execution environment requirement which is sought to be determined and managed by the present technique can more properly be considered to be a limiting level of execution environment requirement. In particular, there are circumstances in which a minimum level of execution environment requirement is what it is appropriate to identify and manage. As an example, a block of code which tests its operating environment to determine a version level of an instruction set architecture supported in that environment and then runs a version of itself appropriate to the operating environment can be considered to have a static type of execution environment requirement and a dynamic type of execution environment requirement. Whilst the block of code may preferably execute using its maximum instruction set architecture version encoding, it is capable of executing in lower instruction set architecture version environments and so the characteristic to determine regarding its dynamic characteristics is the minimum execution environment requirements concerned and this is done with a lattice theory meet operation as opposed to a lattice theory join operation which is utilised to identify a maximum.

[0068] Although illustrative embodiments of the invention have been described in detail herein with reference to the accompanying drawings, it is to be understood that the invention is not limited to those precise embodiments, and that various changes and modifications can be effected therein by one skilled in the art without departing from the scope and spirit of the invention as defined by the appended claims.