Debugging CTFE

Koroskin Denis 2korden at gmail.com
Thu Jun 19 08:16:06 PDT 2008


On Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:11:55 +0400, Don <nospam at nospam.com.au> wrote:

> Matthias Walter wrote:
>> Don Wrote:
>>
>>> Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
>>>> "Matthias Walter" <Matthias.Walter at st.ovgu.de> wrote in message  
>>>> news:g38na9$2gs7$1 at digitalmars.com...
>>>>> Hello,
>>>>>
>>>>> I have written some compile time executable functions with D 1.0  
>>>>> which work in runtime but hang (and allocate memory without end) at  
>>>>> compile-time. Is there a way to debug this further? Can one print  
>>>>> stuff out? (Don't know if writefln works at compile-time, as I'm  
>>>>> using Tango) Can I somehow get a stack trace of the functions called?
>>>>>
>>>> No, no, and no.  CTFE support in the current frontend has some rather  
>>>> unworkable disadvantages.  For one, it's terribly buggy.You're better  
>>>> off trying to convert it to templates in most cases.
>>> I disagree. I've not had much trouble with CTFE. The really, really  
>>> nice thing about CTFE is that you can write it as a runtime function,  
>>> and make sure it works before using it a compile time.
>>>
>>> The problem with CTFE is bugzilla issue #1382 (no memory release for  
>>> CTFE functions)...
>>>
>>> For two, CTFE is
>>>> interpreting a garbage-collected language but is not itself  
>>>> garbage-collected, meaning that memory-unconscious code evaluated at  
>>>> compile time (i.e. a loop that appends data to the end of a string)  
>>>> will just leak like hell and cause the compiler to easily use up  
>>>> several GB of memory. That might be what's happening to your code.
>>> That's very likely. The maximum size of code you can write with CTFE  
>>> is pretty small.
>>>
>>>>  Or it could be a bug in CTFE.
>>> Bugzilla issue #1382 is the killer. One of the most important bugs in  
>>> bugzilla, I reckon.
>>  But in my case, the runtime-function needed some milliseconds,  
>> allocating not more than 1 MB data. the compiler then allocated 1 GB  
>> until I killed the process. I guess, there might be some other bugs.  
>> Unfortunatly, I was unable to make proofing code more easy to get the  
>> cause of the bug.
>
> That'll be issue #1382. You can only do a few thousand memory  
> allocations (including ~) before CTFE dies.
>
> Basically, you can use CTFE for very small tasks, and for library  
> development. Because of #1382, you can't use it large-scale stuff yet.
>
>>  Anyway, I now don't use functions for much stuff, but try to achieve  
>> my needs with templates, although template programming is sometimes a  
>> bit messier. But it works and debugging via pragmas is like  
>> printf-debugging in C and thus just a matter of time :) Training more  
>> functional thinking is also helpful for other things...
>>  best regards and thanks for the tips
>> Matthias

IIRC, there is a Hans Boehm garbage Collector available for MDC, could  
Walter integrate it into DMD and solve the problem? :)


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