* aristo: fork support via layers/txframes
This change reorganises how the database is accessed: instead holding a
"current frame" in the database object, a dag of frames is created based
on the "base frame" held in `AristoDbRef` and all database access
happens through this frame, which can be thought of as a consistent
point-in-time snapshot of the database based on a particular fork of the
chain.
In the code, "frame", "transaction" and "layer" is used to denote more
or less the same thing: a dag of stacked changes backed by the on-disk
database.
Although this is not a requirement, in practice each frame holds the
change set of a single block - as such, the frame and its ancestors
leading up to the on-disk state represents the state of the database
after that block has been applied.
"committing" means merging the changes to its parent frame so that the
difference between them is lost and only the cumulative changes remain -
this facility enables frames to be combined arbitrarily wherever they
are in the dag.
In particular, it becomes possible to consolidate a set of changes near
the base of the dag and commit those to disk without having to re-do the
in-memory frames built on top of them - this is useful for "flattening"
a set of changes during a base update and sending those to storage
without having to perform a block replay on top.
Looking at abstractions, a side effect of this change is that the KVT
and Aristo are brought closer together by considering them to be part of
the "same" atomic transaction set - the way the code gets organised,
applying a block and saving it to the kvt happens in the same "logical"
frame - therefore, discarding the frame discards both the aristo and kvt
changes at the same time - likewise, they are persisted to disk together
- this makes reasoning about the database somewhat easier but has the
downside of increased memory usage, something that perhaps will need
addressing in the future.
Because the code reasons more strictly about frames and the state of the
persisted database, it also makes it more visible where ForkedChain
should be used and where it is still missing - in particular, frames
represent a single branch of history while forkedchain manages multiple
parallel forks - user-facing services such as the RPC should use the
latter, ie until it has been finalized, a getBlock request should
consider all forks and not just the blocks in the canonical head branch.
Another advantage of this approach is that `AristoDbRef` conceptually
becomes more simple - removing its tracking of the "current" transaction
stack simplifies reasoning about what can go wrong since this state now
has to be passed around in the form of `AristoTxRef` - as such, many of
the tests and facilities in the code that were dealing with "stack
inconsistency" are now structurally prevented from happening. The test
suite will need significant refactoring after this change.
Once this change has been merged, there are several follow-ups to do:
* there's no mechanism for keeping frames up to date as they get
committed or rolled back - TODO
* naming is confused - many names for the same thing for legacy reason
* forkedchain support is still missing in lots of code
* clean up redundant logic based on previous designs - in particular the
debug and introspection code no longer makes sense
* the way change sets are stored will probably need revisiting - because
it's a stack of changes where each frame must be interrogated to find an
on-disk value, with a base distance of 128 we'll at minimum have to
perform 128 frame lookups for *every* database interaction - regardless,
the "dag-like" nature will stay
* dispose and commit are poorly defined and perhaps redundant - in
theory, one could simply let the GC collect abandoned frames etc, though
it's likely an explicit mechanism will remain useful, so they stay for
now
More about the changes:
* `AristoDbRef` gains a `txRef` field (todo: rename) that "more or less"
corresponds to the old `balancer` field
* `AristoDbRef.stack` is gone - instead, there's a chain of
`AristoTxRef` objects that hold their respective "layer" which has the
actual changes
* No more reasoning about "top" and "stack" - instead, each
`AristoTxRef` can be a "head" that "more or less" corresponds to the old
single-history `top` notion and its stack
* `level` still represents "distance to base" - it's computed from the
parent chain instead of being stored
* one has to be careful not to use frames where forkedchain was intended
- layers are only for a single branch of history!
* fix layer vtop after rollback
* engine fix
* Fix test_txpool
* Fix test_rpc
* Fix copyright year
* fix simulator
* Fix copyright year
* Fix copyright year
* Fix tracer
* Fix infinite recursion bug
* Remove aristo and kvt empty files
* Fic copyright year
* Fix fc chain_kvt
* ForkedChain refactoring
* Fix merge master conflict
* Fix copyright year
* Reparent txFrame
* Fix test
* Fix txFrame reparent again
* Cleanup and fix test
* UpdateBase bugfix and fix test
* Fixe newPayload bug discovered by hive
* Fix engine api fcu
* Clean up call template, chain_kvt, andn txguid
* Fix copyright year
* work around base block loading issue
* Add test
* Fix updateHead bug
* Fix updateBase bug
* Change func commitBase to proc commitBase
* Touch up and fix debug mode crash
---------
Co-authored-by: jangko <jangko128@gmail.com>
The forking facility has been replaced by ForkedChain - frames and
layers are two other mechanisms that mostly do the same thing at the
aristo level, without quite providing the functionality FC needs - this
cleanup will make that integration easier.
* Aristo: Merge `delta_siblings` module into `deltaPersistent()`
* Aristo: Add `isEmpty()` for canonical checking whether a layer is empty
* Aristo: Merge `LayerDeltaRef` into `LayerObj`
why:
No need to maintain nested object refs anymore. Previously the
`LayerDeltaRef` object had a companion `LayerFinalRef` which held
non-delta layer information.
* Kvt: Merge `LayerDeltaRef` into `LayerRef`
why:
No need to maintain nested object refs (as with `Aristo`)
* Kvt: Re-write balancer logic similar to `Aristo`
why:
Although `Kvt` was a cheap copy of `Aristo` it sort of got out of
sync and the balancer code was wrong.
* Update iterator over forked peers
why:
Yield additional field `isLast` indicating that the last iteration
cycle was approached.
* Optimise balancer calculation.
why:
One can often avoid providing a new object containing the merge of two
layers for the balancer. This avoids copying tables. In some cases this
is replaced by `hasKey()` look ups though. One uses one of the two
to combine and merges the other into the first.
Of course, this needs some checks for making sure that none of the
components to merge is eventually shared with something else.
* Fix copyright year
* Tighten `CoreDb` API for accounts
why:
Apart from cruft, the way to fetch the accounts state root via a
`CoreDbColRef` record was unnecessarily complicated.
* Extend `CoreDb` API for accounts to cover storage tries
why:
In future, this will make the notion of column objects obsolete. Storage
trees will then be indexed by the account address rather than the vertex
ID equivalent like a `CoreDbColRef`.
* Apply new/extended accounts API to ledger and tests
details:
This makes the `distinct_ledger` module obsolete
* Remove column object constructors
why:
They were needed as an abstraction of MPT sub-trees including storage
trees. Now, storage trees are handled by the account (e.g. via address)
they belong to and all other trees can be identified by a constant well
known vertex ID. So there is no need for column objects anymore.
Still there are some left-over column object methods wnich will be
removed next.
* Remove `serialise()` and `PayloadRef` from default Aristo API
why:
Not needed. `PayloadRef` was used for unstructured/unknown payload
formats (account or blob) and `serialise()` was used for decodng
`PayloadRef`. Now it is known in advance what the payload looks
like.
* Added query function `hasStorageData()` whether a storage area exists
why:
Useful for supporting `slotStateEmpty()` of the `CoreDb` API
* In the `Ledger` replace `storage.stateEmpty()` by `slotStateEmpty()`
* On Aristo, hide the storage root/vertex ID in the `PayloadRef`
why:
The storage vertex ID is fully controlled by Aristo while the
`AristoAccount` object is controlled by the application. With the
storage root part of the `AristoAccount` object, there was a useless
administrative burden to keep that storage root field up to date.
* Remove cruft, update comments etc.
* Update changed MPT access paradigms
why:
Fixes verified proxy tests
* Fluffy cosmetics
It is common for many accounts to share the same code - at the database
level, code is stored by hash meaning only one copy exists per unique
program but when loaded in memory, a copy is made for each account.
Further, every time we execute the code, it must be scanned for invalid
jump destinations which slows down EVM exeuction.
Finally, the extcodesize call causes code to be loaded even if only the
size is needed.
This PR improves on all these points by introducing a shared
CodeBytesRef type whose code section is immutable and that can be shared
between accounts. Further, a dedicated `len` API call is added so that
the EXTCODESIZE opcode can operate without polluting the GC and code
cache, for cases where only the size is requested - rocksdb will in this
case cache the code itself in the row cache meaning that lookup of the
code itself remains fast when length is asked for first.
With 16k code entries, there's a 90% hit rate which goes up to 99%
during the 2.3M attack - the cache significantly lowers memory
consumption and execution time not only during this event but across the
board.
* Aristo: Generalise alien/guest interface for piggiback on database
* Aristo: Code cosmetics
* CoreDb+Kvt: Update transaction API
why:
Use single addressable function `forkTx(backLevel: int)` as used
in `Aristo`. So `Kvt` can be synced simultaneously to `Aristo`.
also:
Refactored `kvt_tx.nim` in a similar fashion to `Aristo`.
* Kvt: Replace `LayerDelta` object by reference
why:
Will be needed when introducing filters
* Kvt: Remodel backend filter facility similar to `Aristo`
why:
This allows to operate on several KVT instances simultaneously.
* CoreDb+Kvt: Fix on-disk storage
why:
Overlooked name change: `stow()` => `persist()` for permanent storage
* Fix copyright headers
* Update KVT layers abstraction
details:
modelled after Aristo layers
* Simplified KVT database iterators (removed item counters)
why:
Not needed for production functions
* Simplify KVT merge function `layersCc()`
* Simplified Aristo database iterators (removed item counters)
why:
Not needed for production functions
* Update failure condition for hash labels compiler `hashify()`
why:
Node need not be rejected as long as links are on the schedule. In
that case, `redo[]` is to become `wff.base[]` at a later stage.
* Update merging layers and label update functions
why:
+ Merging a stack of layers with `layersCc()` could be simplified
+ Merging layers will optimise the reverse `kMap[]` table maps
`pAmk: label->{vid, ..}` by deleting empty mappings `label->{}` where
they are redundant.
+ Updated `layersPutLabel()` for optimising `pAmk[]` tables
* Fix kvt headers
* Provide differential layers for KVT transaction stack
why:
Significant performance improvement
* Provide abstraction layer for database top cache layer
why:
This will eventually implemented as a differential database layers
or transaction layers. The latter is needed to improve performance.
behavioural changes:
Zero vertex and keys (i.e. delete requests) are not optimised out
until the last layer is written to the database.
* Provide differential layers for Aristo transaction stack
why:
Significant performance improvement
