The ZIP filesystem has a breaking change. You now need to use /zip/ to
open() / opendir() / etc. assets within the ZIP structure of your APE
binary, instead of the previous convention of using zip: or zip! URIs.
This is needed because Python likes to use absolute paths, and having
ZIP paths encoded like URIs simply broke too many things.
Many more system calls have been updated to be able to operate on ZIP
files and file descriptors. In particular fcntl() and ioctl() since
Python would do things like ask if a ZIP file is a terminal and get
confused when the old implementation mistakenly said yes, because the
fastest way to guarantee native file descriptors is to dup(2). This
change also improves the async signal safety of zipos and ensures it
doesn't maintain any open file descriptors beyond that which the user
has opened.
This change makes a lot of progress towards adding magic numbers that
are specific to platforms other than Linux. The philosophy here is that,
if you use an operating system like FreeBSD, then you should be able to
take advantage of FreeBSD exclusive features, even if we don't polyfill
them on other platforms. For example, you can now open() a file with the
O_VERIFY flag. If your program runs on other platforms, then Cosmo will
automatically set O_VERIFY to zero. This lets you safely use it without
the need for #ifdef or ifstatements which detract from readability.
One of the blindspots of the ASAN memory hardening we use to offer Rust
like assurances has always been that memory passed to the kernel via
system calls (e.g. writev) can't be checked automatically since the
kernel wasn't built with MODE=asan. This change makes more progress
ensuring that each system call will verify the soundness of memory
before it's passed to the kernel. The code for doing these checks is
fast, particularly for buffers, where it can verify 64 bytes a cycle.
- Correct O_LOOP definition on NT
- Introduce program_executable_name
- Add ASAN guards to more system calls
- Improve termios compatibility with BSDs
- Fix bug in Windows auxiliary value encoding
- Add BSD and XNU specific errnos and open flags
- Add check to ensure build doesn't talk to internet
Actually Portable Python is now outperforming the Python binaries
that come bundled with Linux distros, at things like HTTP serving.
You can now have a fully featured Python install in just one .com
file that runs on six operating systems and is about 10mb in size.
With tuning, the tiniest is ~1mb. We've got most of the libraries
working, including pysqlite, and the repl now feels very pleasant.
The things you can't do quite yet are: threads and shared objects
but that can happen in the future, if the community falls in love
with this project and wants to see it developed further. Changes:
- Add siginterrupt()
- Add sqlite3 to Python
- Add issymlink() helper
- Make GetZipCdir() faster
- Add tgamma() and finite()
- Add legacy function lutimes()
- Add readlink() and realpath()
- Use heap allocations when appropriate
- Reorganize Python into two-stage build
- Save Lua / Python shell history to dotfile
- Integrate Python Lib embedding into linkage
- Make isregularfile() and isdirectory() go faster
- Make Python shell auto-completion work perfectly
- Make crash reports work better if changed directory
- Fix Python+NT open() / access() flag overflow error
- Disable Python tests relating to \N{LONG NAME} syntax
- Have Python REPL copyright() show all notice embeddings
The biggest technical challenge at the moment is working around
when Python tries to be too clever about filenames.
We can put this back the moment someone requests it. Pain-free garbage
collection for the C language is pretty cool. All it does is overwrite
the return address with a trampoline that calls free(). It's not clear
what it should be named if it's made a public API.
- Get ASAN working on Windows.
- Deleting directories and then recreating them with the same name in a
short period of time appears to be a no-no on Windows.
- There's no reason to call FlushFileBuffers on close() for pipes, and
it's harmful since it might block indefinitely for no good reason.
This change enables Address Sanitizer systemically w/ `make MODE=dbg`.
Our version of Rust's `unsafe` keyword is named `noasan` which is used
for two functions that do aligned memory chunking, like `strcpy.c` and
we need to fix the tiny DEFLATE code, but that's it everything else is
fabulous you can have all the fischer price security blankets you need
Best of all is we're now able to use the ASAN data in Blinkenlights to
colorize the memory dumps. See the screenshot below of a test program:
https://justine.lol/blinkenlights/asan.png
Which is operating on float arrays stored on the stack, with red areas
indicating poisoned memory, and the green areas indicate valid memory.
This program popped up on Hacker News recently. It's the only modern
compiler I've ever seen that doesn't have dependencies and is easily
modified. So I added all of the missing GNU extensions I like to use
which means it might be possible soon to build on non-Linux and have
third party not vendor gcc binaries.
I wanted a tiny scriptable meltdown proof way to run userspace programs
and visualize how program execution impacts memory. It helps to explain
how things like Actually Portable Executable works. It can show you how
the GCC generated code is going about manipulating matrices and more. I
didn't feel fully comfortable with Qemu and Bochs because I'm not smart
enough to understand them. I wanted something like gVisor but with much
stronger levels of assurances. I wanted a single binary that'll run, on
all major operating systems with an embedded GPL barrier ZIP filesystem
that is tiny enough to transpile to JavaScript and run in browsers too.
https://justine.storage.googleapis.com/emulator625.mp4
