5 ms·

> That's how big a statically-linked executable needs to be to run natively without dependencies on Linux, Mac, Windows, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and BIOS. *

by comex 6y ago

> That's how big a statically-linked executable needs to be to run natively without dependencies on Linux, Mac, Windows, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and BIOS. * on x86. There was a time period when it was reasonable to just assume everything that mattered was x86. It started sometime in the early 2000s, as non-x86 servers died out and Macs switched to x86. And it ended last November, when Apple announced Macs would switch to ARM. The author has suggested sticking with x86 and handling other architectures using emulation. But x86 is the worst possible architecture to emulate, because its strong memory ordering model means that emulators on other architectures essentially must limit the emulated process to a single core. (Unless you have special hardware support like M1 Macs do… for now.) Also, any hardware CPU architecture is going to be slower to emulate than a purpose-built bytecode – and we already have a good enough bytecode, WebAssembly. Emulating x86 might make sense anyway if you assume that x86 is and will be the norm, and non-x86 an edge case that can afford to take a performance hit. But that sure doesn't seem to be the way the wind is blowing. [1] https://justine.lol/ape.html https://justine.lol/ape.html

spijdar 6y ago
I'll admit to being biased up front, as I run a lot of ARM and POWER stuff, so I have a vested interest, but I have to agree that this feels short sighted. ARM at the very least has a big potential to take a much bigger slice of the market, with ARM servers and ARM Macs "finally" coming out in force, while ARM has been dominating smartphone and mobile devices for at least the last, say, 15 years, and has gotten a lot of mindshare through SBCs like the Raspberry Pi. It's a fun project, but I don't think the assumption that everything is x86 is as safe as the author proposes.
jart 6y ago
Author here. These binaries will re-exec themselves under Qemu if you run them on different architectures. So they truly are build-once run-anywhere. I think improving performance on other architectures is great. There's nothing that inherently limits the Actually Portable Executable format from baking in native support for other architectures. It's simply a question of focus. What Cosmopolitan does, it does really well. No other C library is able to target multiple operating systems and all the x86 microarchitectures. You can now easily distribute software that can be easily run on the vast majority of PCs and servers. Want it to do more? Consider becoming a sponsor. The impact the project is already having should be all the proof we need that it could be doing much more. In order for that to happen it needs your support.
- lhorie 6y ago
  Semi off-topic, but having just come across this project, I just started looking back at some of your stuff and saw a comment about an ape chibicc fork. What's the state of that? Is it usable yet?
  - jart 6y ago
    It's usable but not polished yet. Lots of GNU extensions and an integrated assembler were added. You can read about them here: https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan/blob/master/third_party/chibicc/README.cosmo https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan/blob/master/third_party... I have automated tests which do a two-stage build and test on every platform each time I run make, so it's going to stay stable. The two other things I want are an integrated linker and VLA parameters. Rui is helping me implement those. So I anticipate we can start distributing a APE build of complete chibicc toolchain very soon that you can use to build APE binaries on any platform. Keep in mind this compiler doesn't optimize. So if you're OK taking a 2x performance hit, you're going to find that your code compiles significantly faster than GCC or Clang and you're going to have the convenience of the fact that the whole toolchain will be a single .com file that you can just scp on any server for a fully deterministic reproducible build experience. It's also the most readable and hackable compiler codebase I've ever seen, so if you've ever wanted to pull out the dragon book at try your hand at optimizing, you'll find that chibicc is fertile ground to do it.
    - lhorie 6y ago
      Very exciting stuff! I'll try to take it for a spin tonight :)
      - jart 6y ago
        Here's something you can paste into your Linux terminal to get started: git clone https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan cd cosmopolitan make -j8 o/third_party/chibicc/chibicc.com -include libc/integral/normalize.inc -o hello.com.dbg examples/hello.c o/cosmopolitan.a o/third_party/gcc/bin/x86_64-linux-musl-objcopy -SO binary hello.com.dbg hello.com ./hello.com
zamadatix 6y ago
The time period still continues until something other than x86 is consistently runnable (emulation or not) or most apps have done significant rewrites, not when different hardware shows up.
heavyset_go 6y ago
> And it ended last November, when Apple announced Macs would switch to ARM. This is revisionism. It ended with the smartphone and netbook era, both of which put more ARM devices in homes than Macs ever will.
- minikites 6y ago
  I thought most "netbooks" had Intel Atom processors?
  - velosol 6y ago
    I agree. It might depend on where you start the 'netbook' definition and how you count 'most'. The EeePC was x86, the Chromebook Pixel was x86 along with many that followed with balance being ARM variants. More recently you have convertibles/ultrabooks and their stripped down cousins (e.g. Microsoft Surface Pro vs. Surface 3/Go/Go 2 and Surface 2, Surface RT, and Surface Pro X the latter 3 being ARM). Ultimately the netbook niche has been squeeze by ultrabooks and tablets to few offerings if anyone is even bothering to market computers that way anymore.
- comex 6y ago
  Well. I haven't heard of ARM netbooks being a big thing. But yes, smartphones and other non-desktop-operating-system devices have been ARM for a long time. And other architectures still show up on other embedded devices, like MIPS on routers. By "everything that mattered" I guess I should have said "everything that mattered that you have a shell on". For some of those non-desktop-operating-system devices, getting a shell is impossible without bypassing lockdown measures. For others, it's possible, but not particularly common as far as I know, for a variety of reasons. They tend to run stripped-down OSes; they don't have great keyboards; they were pretty slow compared to desktops until recently. Yes, this is a huge overgeneralization. Plenty of people do run shells on their phones or routers. But I do believe that a major desktop platform switching to ARM is qualitatively different from what we'd seen before.
  - LordDragonfang 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
saagarjha 6y ago
Has anyone actually benchmarked top-tier WebAssembly engines against good emulators? I'd be very curious to hear what the results are like. Although, Rosetta might have to be excluded because it cheats in fidelity by using the host MMU…

by comex 6y ago

spijdar 6y ago

I'll admit to being biased up front, as I run a lot of ARM and POWER stuff, so I have a vested interest, but I have to agree that this feels short sighted. ARM at the very least has a big potential to take a much bigger slice of the market, with ARM servers and ARM Macs "finally" coming out in force, while ARM has been dominating smartphone and mobile devices for at least the last, say, 15 years, and has gotten a lot of mindshare through SBCs like the Raspberry Pi. It's a fun project, but I don't think the assumption that everything is x86 is as safe as the author proposes.

jart 6y ago

Author here. These binaries will re-exec themselves under Qemu if you run them on different architectures. So they truly are build-once run-anywhere. I think improving performance on other architectures is great. There's nothing that inherently limits the Actually Portable Executable format from baking in native support for other architectures. It's simply a question of focus. What Cosmopolitan does, it does really well. No other C library is able to target multiple operating systems and all the x86 microarchitectures. You can now easily distribute software that can be easily run on the vast majority of PCs and servers. Want it to do more? Consider becoming a sponsor. The impact the project is already having should be all the proof we need that it could be doing much more. In order for that to happen it needs your support.

lhorie 6y ago
Semi off-topic, but having just come across this project, I just started looking back at some of your stuff and saw a comment about an ape chibicc fork. What's the state of that? Is it usable yet?
- jart 6y ago
  It's usable but not polished yet. Lots of GNU extensions and an integrated assembler were added. You can read about them here: https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan/blob/master/third_party/chibicc/README.cosmo https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan/blob/master/third_party... I have automated tests which do a two-stage build and test on every platform each time I run make, so it's going to stay stable. The two other things I want are an integrated linker and VLA parameters. Rui is helping me implement those. So I anticipate we can start distributing a APE build of complete chibicc toolchain very soon that you can use to build APE binaries on any platform. Keep in mind this compiler doesn't optimize. So if you're OK taking a 2x performance hit, you're going to find that your code compiles significantly faster than GCC or Clang and you're going to have the convenience of the fact that the whole toolchain will be a single .com file that you can just scp on any server for a fully deterministic reproducible build experience. It's also the most readable and hackable compiler codebase I've ever seen, so if you've ever wanted to pull out the dragon book at try your hand at optimizing, you'll find that chibicc is fertile ground to do it.
  - lhorie 6y ago
    Very exciting stuff! I'll try to take it for a spin tonight :)
    - jart 6y ago
      Here's something you can paste into your Linux terminal to get started: git clone https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan cd cosmopolitan make -j8 o/third_party/chibicc/chibicc.com -include libc/integral/normalize.inc -o hello.com.dbg examples/hello.c o/cosmopolitan.a o/third_party/gcc/bin/x86_64-linux-musl-objcopy -SO binary hello.com.dbg hello.com ./hello.com

zamadatix 6y ago

The time period still continues until something other than x86 is consistently runnable (emulation or not) or most apps have done significant rewrites, not when different hardware shows up.

heavyset_go 6y ago

> And it ended last November, when Apple announced Macs would switch to ARM. This is revisionism. It ended with the smartphone and netbook era, both of which put more ARM devices in homes than Macs ever will.

minikites 6y ago
I thought most "netbooks" had Intel Atom processors?
- velosol 6y ago
  I agree. It might depend on where you start the 'netbook' definition and how you count 'most'. The EeePC was x86, the Chromebook Pixel was x86 along with many that followed with balance being ARM variants. More recently you have convertibles/ultrabooks and their stripped down cousins (e.g. Microsoft Surface Pro vs. Surface 3/Go/Go 2 and Surface 2, Surface RT, and Surface Pro X the latter 3 being ARM). Ultimately the netbook niche has been squeeze by ultrabooks and tablets to few offerings if anyone is even bothering to market computers that way anymore.
comex 6y ago
Well. I haven't heard of ARM netbooks being a big thing. But yes, smartphones and other non-desktop-operating-system devices have been ARM for a long time. And other architectures still show up on other embedded devices, like MIPS on routers. By "everything that mattered" I guess I should have said "everything that mattered that you have a shell on". For some of those non-desktop-operating-system devices, getting a shell is impossible without bypassing lockdown measures. For others, it's possible, but not particularly common as far as I know, for a variety of reasons. They tend to run stripped-down OSes; they don't have great keyboards; they were pretty slow compared to desktops until recently. Yes, this is a huge overgeneralization. Plenty of people do run shells on their phones or routers. But I do believe that a major desktop platform switching to ARM is qualitatively different from what we'd seen before.
- LordDragonfang 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

saagarjha 6y ago

Has anyone actually benchmarked top-tier WebAssembly engines against good emulators? I'd be very curious to hear what the results are like. Although, Rosetta might have to be excluded because it cheats in fidelity by using the host MMU…