Once again, all of our changes this week are for new type solver and the
JIT.
In the new type solver, we fixed cyclic type alias handling and multiple
stability issues.
In the JIT, our main progress was for arm64, where, after lowering 36%
of instructions, we start seeing first Luau functions executing
natively.
For x64, we performed code cleanup and refactoring to allow for future
optimizations.
All of our changes this week have been focused on the new type solver
and the JIT.
As we march toward feature parity with the old solver, we've tightened
up a bunch of lingering issues with overload resolution, unsealed
tables, and type normalization. We've also fixed a bunch of crashes and
assertion failures in the new solver.
On the JIT front, we've started work on an A64 backend, improved the IR
analysis in a bunch of cases, and implemented assembly generation for
the builtin functions `type()` and `typeof()`.
---------
Co-authored-by: Arseny Kapoulkine <arseny.kapoulkine@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: Vyacheslav Egorov <vegorov@roblox.com>
* A small subset of control-flow refinements have been added to
recognize type options that are unreachable after a
conditional/unconditional code block. (Fixes
https://github.com/Roblox/luau/issues/356).
Some examples:
```lua
local function f(x: string?)
if not x then return end
-- x is 'string' here
end
```
Throwing calls like `error` or `assert(false)` instead of 'return' are
also recognized.
Existing complex refinements like type/typeof and tagged union checks
are expected to work, among others.
To enable this feature, `LuauTinyControlFlowAnalysis` exclusion has to
be removed from `ExperimentalFlags.h`.
If will become enabled unconditionally in the near future.
* Linter has been integrated into the typechecker analysis so that
type-aware lint warnings can work in any mode
`Frontend::lint` methods were deprecated, `Frontend::check` has to be
used instead with `runLintChecks` option set.
Resulting lint warning are located inside `CheckResult`.
* Fixed large performance drop and increased memory consumption when
array is filled at an offset (Fixes
https://github.com/Roblox/luau/issues/590)
* Part of [Type error suppression
RFC](https://github.com/Roblox/luau/blob/master/rfcs/type-error-suppression.md)
was implemented making subtyping checks with `any` type transitive.
---
In our work on the new type-solver:
* `--!nocheck` mode no longer reports type errors
* New solver will not be used for `--!nonstrict` modules until all
issues with strict mode typechecking are fixed
* Added control-flow aware type refinements mentioned earlier
In native code generation:
* `LOP_NAMECALL` has been translated to IR
* `type` and `typeof` builtin fastcalls have been translated to
IR/assembly
* Additional steps were taken towards arm64 support
For now just do this in strict mode. This will help us track performance
over time, although for now the behavior is going to keep changing so
it's not going to be a fully solid metric for a few weeks.
* Fix#817
* Fix#850
* Optimize math.floor/ceil/round with SSE4.1
* Results in a ~7-9% speedup on the math-cordic benchmark.
* Optimized table.sort.
* table.sort is now ~4.1x faster (when not using a predicate) and ~2.1x
faster when using a simple predicate. Performance may improve further in
the future.
* Reorganize the memory ownership of builtin type definitions.
* This is a small initial step toward affording parallel typechecking.
The new type solver is coming along nicely. We are working on fixing
crashes and bugs.
A few major changes to native codegen landed this week:
* Fixed lowering of Luau IR mod instruction when first argument is a
constant
* Added VM register data-flow/capture analysis
* Fixed issues with optimizations in unreachable blocks
---------
Co-authored-by: Arseny Kapoulkine <arseny.kapoulkine@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: Vyacheslav Egorov <vegorov@roblox.com>
* Fixed incorrect lexeme generated for string parts in the middle of an
interpolated string (Fixes https://github.com/Roblox/luau/issues/744)
* DeprecatedApi lint can report some issues without type inference
information
* Fixed performance of autocomplete requests when suggestions have large
intersection types (Solves
https://github.com/Roblox/luau/discussions/847)
* Marked `table.getn`/`foreach`/`foreachi` as deprecated ([RFC:
Deprecate
table.getn/foreach/foreachi](https://github.com/Roblox/luau/blob/master/rfcs/deprecate-table-getn-foreach.md))
* With -O2 optimization level, we now optimize builtin calls based on
known argument/return count.
Note that this change can be observable if `getfenv/setfenv` is used to
substitute a builtin, especially if arity is different.
Fastcall heavy tests show a 1-2% improvement.
* Luau can now be built with clang-cl (Fixes
https://github.com/Roblox/luau/issues/736)
We also made many improvements to our experimental components.
For our new type solver:
* Overhauled data flow analysis system, fixed issues with 'repeat'
loops, global variables and type annotations
* Type refinements now work on generic table indexing with a string
literal
* Type refinements will properly track potentially 'nil' values (like
t[x] for a missing key) and their further refinements
* Internal top table type is now isomorphic to `{}` which fixes issues
when `typeof(v) == 'table'` type refinement is handled
* References to non-existent types in type annotations no longer resolve
to 'error' type like in old solver
* Improved handling of class unions in property access expressions
* Fixed default type packs
* Unsealed tables can now have metatables
* Restored expected types for function arguments
And for native code generation:
* Added min and max IR instructions mapping to vminsd/vmaxsd on x64
* We now speculatively extract direct execution fast-paths based on
expected types of expressions which provides better optimization
opportunities inside a single basic block
* Translated existing math fastcalls to IR form to improve tag guard
removal and constant propagation
Note that native code gen is currently exempt from any security guarantees as it's a pre-production R&D component right now. This will change in the future as we deploy it to production.
It looks like all three functions actually have been deprecated in Lua
5.1, and removed in Lua 5.2.
We do not plan to remove them to retain backwards compatibility, but the
RFC should be more precise.
We've made a few small changes to reduce the amount of stack we use when
typechecking nested method calls (eg `foo:bar():baz():quux()`).
We've also fixed a small bytecode compiler issue that caused us to emit
redundant jump instructions in code that conditionally uses `break` or
`continue`.
On the new solver, we've switched to a new, better way to handle
augmentations to unsealed tables. We've also made some substantial
improvements to type inference and error reporting on function calls.
These things should both be on par with the old solver now.
The main improvements to the native code generator have been elimination
of some redundant type tag checks. Also, we are starting to inline
particular fastcalls directly to IR.
---------
Co-authored-by: Arseny Kapoulkine <arseny.kapoulkine@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: Vyacheslav Egorov <vegorov@roblox.com>
1. Added information about Homebrew installation (based off this
information [here](https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/luau#default))
2. Added details related to installing binary files that are downloaded
3. Rearranged and added titles for easier reading
Fixes#791.
Co-authored-by: Arseny Kapoulkine <arseny.kapoulkine@gmail.com>
This week we only have updates to new type solver and JIT. Both projects
are still in the process of being built out. Neither are ready for
general use yet.
In the new solver, we fixed issues with recursive type aliases.
Duplicated type parameters are once again reported, exported types are
being recorder and function argument names are placed inside function
types.
We also made improvements to restore parts of bidirectional type
tracking.
On native code generation side, namecall instruction lowering was fixed,
we fixed inconsistencies in IR command definitions and added utility
function to help with constant folding.
* Fix a bug where reading a property from an unsealed table caused
inference to improperly infer the existence of that property.
* Fix#827
We have also made a lot of progress on the new solver and the JIT. Both
projects are still in the process of being built out. Neither are ready
for general use yet.
We are mostly working to tighten up how the new solver handles
refinements and updates to unsealed tables to bring it up to the same
level as the old solver.
---------
Co-authored-by: Arseny Kapoulkine <arseny.kapoulkine@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: Vyacheslav Egorov <vegorov@roblox.com>
* Fixed rare use-after-free in analysis during table unification
A lot of work these past months went into two new Luau components:
* A near full rewrite of the typechecker using a new deferred constraint
resolution system
* Native code generation for AoT/JiT compilation of VM bytecode into x64
(avx)/arm64 instructions
Both of these components are far from finished and we don't provide
documentation on building and using them at this point.
However, curious community members expressed interest in learning about
changes that go into these components each week, so we are now listing
them here in the 'sync' pull request descriptions.
---
New typechecker can be enabled by setting
DebugLuauDeferredConstraintResolution flag to 'true'.
It is considered unstable right now, so try it at your own risk.
Even though it already provides better type inference than the current
one in some cases, our main goal right now is to reach feature parity
with current typechecker.
Features which improve over the capabilities of the current typechecker
are marked as '(NEW)'.
Changes to new typechecker:
* Regular for loop index and parameters are now typechecked
* Invalid type annotations on local variables are ignored to improve
autocomplete
* Fixed missing autocomplete type suggestions for function arguments
* Type reduction is now performed to produce simpler types to be
presented to the user (error messages, custom LSPs)
* Internally, complex types like '((number | string) & ~(false?)) |
string' can be produced, which is just 'string | number' when simplified
* Fixed spots where support for unknown and never types was missing
* (NEW) Length operator '#' is now valid to use on top table type, this
type comes up when doing typeof(x) == "table" guards and isn't available
in current typechecker
---
Changes to native code generation:
* Additional math library fast calls are now lowered to x64: math.ldexp,
math.round, math.frexp, math.modf, math.sign and math.clamp
