As mentioned in #4450, `websocket` was experimental with a single intended
user, `webrepl`. Therefore, we'll make this change without a weak
link `websocket` -> `uwebsocket`.
Python defines warnings as belonging to categories, where category is a
warning type (descending from exception type). This is useful, as e.g.
allows to disable warnings selectively and provide user-defined warning
types. So, implement this in MicroPython, except that categories are
represented just with strings. However, enough hooks are left to implement
categories differently per-port (e.g. as types), without need to patch each
and every usage.
If MICROPY_PERSISTENT_CODE_LOAD or MICROPY_ENABLE_COMPILER are enabled then
code gets enabled that calls file reading functions which may be disabled
if no readers have been implemented.
To fix this, introduce a MICROPY_HAS_FILE_READER variable, which is
automatically set if MICROPY_READER_POSIX or MICROPY_READER_VFS is set but
can also be manually set if a custom reader is being implemented. Then
disable the file reading calls if this is not set.
Changes to the layout of the bytecode header meant that this debug code was
no longer compiling. This is now fixed and a new compile-time option is
introduced, MICROPY_DEBUG_VM_STACK_OVERFLOW, to turn on this feature (which
is disabled by default). This option is needed because more than one file
needs to cooperate to make this check work.
It's more robust to have the version defined statically in a header file,
rather than dynamically generating it via git using a git tag. In case
git doesn't exist, or a different source control tool is used, it's
important to still have the uPy version number available.
SHORT, INT, LONG, LONGLONG, and unsigned (U*) variants are being defined.
This is done at compile using GCC-style predefined macros like
__SIZEOF_INT__. If the compiler doesn't have such defines, no such types
will be defined.
A new option MICROPY_GC_STACK_ENTRY_TYPE is added to select a custom type
instead of size_t for the gc_stack array items. This can be beneficial for
small devices, especially those that are low on memory anyway. If a device
has 1MB or less of heap (and 16-byte GC blocks) then this type can be
uint16_t, saving 128 bytes of RAM.
Configurable via MICROPY_MODULE_GETATTR, disabled by default. Among other
things __getattr__ for modules can help to build lazy loading / code
unloading at runtime.
Configurable via MICROPY_PY_BUILTINS_STR_COUNT. Default is enabled.
Disabled for bare-arm, minimal, unix-minimal and zephyr ports. Disabling
it saves 408 bytes on x86.
This commit adds the math.factorial function in two variants:
- squared difference, which is faster than the naive version, relatively
compact, and non-recursive;
- a mildly optimised recursive version, faster than the above one.
There are some more optimisations that could be done, but they tend to take
more code, and more storage space. The recursive version seems like a
sensible compromise.
The new function is disabled by default, and uses the non-optimised version
by default if it is enabled. The options are MICROPY_PY_MATH_FACTORIAL
and MICROPY_OPT_MATH_FACTORIAL.
This patch in effect renames MICROPY_DEBUG_PRINTER_DEST to
MICROPY_DEBUG_PRINTER, moving its default definition from
lib/utils/printf.c to py/mpconfig.h to make it official and documented, and
makes this macro a pointer rather than the actual mp_print_t struct. This
is done to get consistency with MICROPY_ERROR_PRINTER, and provide this
macro for use outside just lib/utils/printf.c.
Ports are updated to use the new macro name.
This feature is controlled at compile time by MICROPY_PY_URE_SUB, disabled
by default.
Thanks to @dmazzella for the original patch for this feature; see #3770.
This feature is controlled at compile time by
MICROPY_PY_URE_MATCH_SPAN_START_END, disabled by default.
Thanks to @dmazzella for the original patch for this feature; see #3770.
This feature is controlled at compile time by MICROPY_PY_URE_MATCH_GROUPS,
disabled by default.
Thanks to @dmazzella for the original patch for this feature; see #3770.
Allow including crypto consts based on compilation settings. Disabled by
default to reduce code size; if one wants extra code readability, can
enable them.
The API follows guidelines of https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0272/,
but is optimized for code size, with the idea that full PEP 0272
compatibility can be added with a simple Python wrapper mode.
The naming of the module follows (u)hashlib pattern.
At the bare minimum, this module is expected to provide:
* AES128, ECB (i.e. "null") mode, encrypt only
Implementation in this commit is based on axTLS routines, and implements
following:
* AES 128 and 256
* ECB and CBC modes
* encrypt and decrypt
Via the config value MICROPY_PY_UHASHLIB_SHA256. Default to enabled to
keep backwards compatibility.
Also add default value for the sha1 class, to at least document its
existence.
A user class derived from IOBase and implementing readinto/write/ioctl can
now be used anywhere a native stream object is accepted.
The mapping from C to Python is:
stream_p->read --> readinto(buf)
stream_p->write --> write(buf)
stream_p->ioctl --> ioctl(request, arg)
Among other things it allows the user to:
- create an object which can be passed as the file argument to print:
print(..., file=myobj), and then print will pass all the data to the
object via the objects write method (same as CPython)
- pass a user object to uio.BufferedWriter to buffer the writes (same as
CPython)
- use select.select on a user object
- register user objects with select.poll, in particular so user objects can
be used with uasyncio
- create user files that can be returned from user filesystems, and import
can import scripts from these user files
For example:
class MyOut(io.IOBase):
def write(self, buf):
print('write', repr(buf))
return len(buf)
print('hello', file=MyOut())
The feature is enabled via MICROPY_PY_IO_IOBASE which is disabled by
default.
This patch is a code optimisation, trading text bytes for speed. On
pyboard it's an increase of 0.06% in code size for a gain (in pystone
performance) of roughly 6.5%.
The patch optimises load/store/delete of attributes in user defined classes
by not looking up special accessors (@property, __get__, __delete__,
__set__, __setattr__ and __getattr_) if they are guaranteed not to exist in
the class.
Currently, if you do my_obj.foo() then the runtime has to do a few checks
to see if foo is a property or has __get__, and if so delegate the call.
And for stores things like my_obj.foo = 1 has to first check if foo is a
property or has __set__ defined on it.
Doing all those checks each and every time the attribute is accessed has a
performance penalty. This patch eliminates all those checks for cases when
it's guaranteed that the checks will always fail, ie no attributes are
properties nor have any special accessor methods defined on them.
To make this guarantee it checks all attributes of a user-defined class
when it is first created. If any of the attributes of the user class are
properties or have special accessors, or any of the base classes of the
user class have them, then it sets a flag in the class to indicate that
special accessors must be checked for. Then in the load/store/delete code
it checks this flag to see if it can take the shortcut and optimise the
lookup.
It's an optimisation that's pretty widely applicable because it improves
lookup performance for all methods of user defined classes, and stores of
attributes, at least for those that don't have special accessors. And, it
allows to enable descriptors with minimal additional runtime overhead if
they are not used for a particular user class.
There is one restriction on dynamic class creation that has been introduced
by this patch: a user-defined class cannot go from zero special accessors
to one special accessor (or more) after that class has been subclassed. If
the script attempts this an AttributeError is raised (see addition to
tests/misc/non_compliant.py for an example of this case).
The cost in code space bytes for the optimisation in this patch is:
unix x64: +528
unix nanbox: +508
stm32: +192
cc3200: +200
esp8266: +332
esp32: +244
Performance tests that were done:
- on unix x86-64, pystone improved by about 5%
- on pyboard, pystone improved by about 6.5%, from 1683 up to 1794
- on pyboard, bm_chaos (from CPython benchmark suite) improved by about 5%
- on esp32, pystone improved by about 30% (but there are caching effects)
- on esp32, bm_chaos improved by about 11%
This VFS component allows to mount a host POSIX filesystem within the uPy
VFS sub-system. All traditional POSIX file access then goes through the
VFS, allowing to sandbox a uPy process to a certain sub-dir of the host
system, as well as mount other filesystem types alongside the host
filesystem.
This patch changes 2 things in the endianness detection:
1. Don't assume that __BYTE_ORDER__ not being __ORDER_LITTLE_ENDIAN__ means
that the machine is big endian, so add an explicit check that this macro
is indeed __ORDER_BIG_ENDIAN__ (same with __BYTE_ORDER, __LITTLE_ENDIAN
and __BIG_ENDIAN). A machine could have PDP endianness.
2. Remove the checks which base their autodetection decision on whether any
little or big endian macros are defined (eg __LITTLE_ENDIAN__ or
__BIG_ENDIAN__). Just because a system defines these does not mean it
has that endianness.
See issue #3760.
So far, implements just append() and popleft() methods, required for
a normal queue. Constructor doesn't accept an arbitarry sequence to
initialize from (am empty deque is always created), so an empty tuple
must be passed as such. Only fixed-size deques are supported, so 2nd
argument (size) is required.
There's also an extension to CPython - if True is passed as 3rd argument,
append(), instead of silently overwriting the oldest item on queue
overflow, will throw IndexError. This behavior is desired in many
cases, where queues should store information reliably, instead of
silently losing some items.
The micropython.stack_use() function is useful to query the current C stack
usage, and it's inclusion in the micropython module doesn't need to be tied
to the inclusion of mem_info()/qstr_info() because it doesn't rely on any
of the code from these functions. So this patch introduces the config
option MICROPY_PY_MICROPYTHON_STACK_USE which can be used to independently
control the inclusion of stack_use(). By default it is enabled if
MICROPY_PY_MICROPYTHON_MEM_INFO is enabled (thus not changing any of the
existing ports).
The new option is MICROPY_ENABLE_EXTERNAL_IMPORT and is enabled by default
so that the default behaviour is the same as before. With it disabled
import is only supported for built-in modules, not for external files nor
frozen modules. This allows to support targets that have no filesystem of
any kind and that only have access to pre-supplied built-in modules
implemented natively.
This feature is not often used so is guarded by the config option
MICROPY_PY_BUILTINS_RANGE_BINOP which is disabled by default. With this
option disabled MicroPython will always return false when comparing two
range objects for equality (unless they are exactly the same object
instance). This does not match CPython so if (in)equality between range
objects is needed then this option should be enabled.
Enabling this option costs between 100 and 200 bytes of code space
depending on the machine architecture.
This patch combines the compiler optimisation code for double and triple
tuple-to-tuple assignment, taking it from two separate if-blocks to one
combined if-block. This can be done because the code for both of these
optimisations has a lot in common. Combining them together reduces code
size for ports that have the triple-tuple optimisation enabled (and doesn't
change code size for ports that have it disabled).
This implements .pend_throw(exc) method, which sets up an exception to be
triggered on the next call to generator's .__next__() or .send() method.
This is unlike .throw(), which immediately starts to execute the generator
to process the exception. This effectively adds Future-like capabilities
to generator protocol (exception will be raised in the future).
The need for such a method arised to implement uasyncio wait_for() function
efficiently (its behavior is clearly "Future" like, and normally would
require to introduce an expensive Future wrapper around all native
couroutines, like upstream asyncio does).
py/objgenerator: pend_throw: Return previous pended value.
This effectively allows to store an additional value (not necessary an
exception) in a coroutine while it's not being executed. uasyncio has
exactly this usecase: to mark a coro waiting in I/O queue (and thus
not executed in the normal scheduling queue), for the purpose of
implementing wait_for() function (cancellation of such waiting coro
by a timeout).
The nan-boxing representation has an extra 16-bits of space to store
small-int values, and making use of it allows to create and manipulate full
32-bit positive integers (ie up to 0xffffffff) without using the heap.
This patch introduces the MICROPY_ENABLE_PYSTACK option (disabled by
default) which enables a "Python stack" that allows to allocate and free
memory in a scoped, or Last-In-First-Out (LIFO) way, similar to alloca().
A new memory allocation API is introduced along with this Py-stack. It
includes both "local" and "nonlocal" LIFO allocation. Local allocation is
intended to be equivalent to using alloca(), whereby the same function must
free the memory. Nonlocal allocation is where another function may free
the memory, so long as it's still LIFO.
Follow-up patches will convert all uses of alloca() and VLA to the new
scoped allocation API. The old behaviour (using alloca()) will still be
available, but when MICROPY_ENABLE_PYSTACK is enabled then alloca() is no
longer required or used.
The benefits of enabling this option are (or will be once subsequent
patches are made to convert alloca()/VLA):
- Toolchains without alloca() can use this feature to obtain correct and
efficient scoped memory allocation (compared to using the heap instead
of alloca(), which is slower).
- Even if alloca() is available, enabling the Py-stack gives slightly more
efficient use of stack space when calling nested Python functions, due to
the way that compilers implement alloca().
- Enabling the Py-stack with the stackless mode allows for even more
efficient stack usage, as well as retaining high performance (because the
heap is no longer used to build and destroy stackless code states).
- With Py-stack and stackless enabled, Python-calling-Python is no longer
recursive in the C mp_execute_bytecode function.
The micropython.pystack_use() function is included to measure usage of the
Python stack.
This function was implemented as an experiment, and was enabled only in
unix port. To remind, it allows to access arbitrary files frozen as
source modules (vs bytecode).
However, further experimentation showed that the same functionality can
be implemented with frozen bytecode. The process requires more steps, but
with suitable toolset it doesn't matter patch. This process is:
1. Convert binary files into "Python resource module" with
tools/mpy_bin2res.py.
2. Freeze as the bytecode.
3. Use micropython-lib's pkg_resources.resource_stream() to access it.
In other words, the extra step is using tools/mpy_bin2res.py (because
there would be wrapper for uio.resource_stream() anyway).
Going frozen bytecode route allows more flexibility, and same/additional
efficiency:
1. Frozen source support can be disabled altogether for additional code
savings.
2. Resources could be also accessed as a buffer, not just as a stream.
There're few caveats too:
1. It wasn't actually profiled the overhead of storing a resource in
"Python resource module" vs storing it directly, but it's assumed that
overhead is small.
2. The "efficiency" claim above applies to the case when resource
file is frozen as the bytecode. If it's not, it actually will take a
lot of RAM on loading. But in this case, the resource file should not
be used (i.e. generated) in the first place, and micropython-lib's
pkg_resources.resource_stream() implementation has the appropriate
fallback to read the raw files instead. This still poses some distribution
issues, e.g. to deployable to baremetal ports (which almost certainly
would require freezeing as the bytecode), a distribution package should
include the resource module. But for non-freezing deployment, presense
of resource module will lead to memory inefficiency.
All the discussion above reminds why uio.resource_stream() was implemented
in the first place - to address some of the issues above. However, since
then, frozen bytecode approach seems to prevail, so, while there're still
some issues to address with it, this change is being made.
This change saves 488 bytes for the unix x86_64 port.
This patch introduces a new compile-time config option to disable multiple
inheritance at the Python level: MICROPY_MULTIPLE_INHERITANCE. It is
enabled by default.
Disabling multiple inheritance eliminates a lot of recursion in the call
graph (which is important for some embedded systems), and can be used to
reduce code size for ports that are really constrained (by around 200 bytes
for Thumb2 archs).
With multiple inheritance disabled all tests in the test-suite pass except
those that explicitly test for multiple inheritance.
Macros to convert big-endian values to host byte order and vice-versa.
These were defined in adhoc way for some ports (e.g. esp8266), allow
reuse, provide default implementations, while allow ports to override.
Per the comment found here
https://github.com/micropython/micropython-esp32/issues/209#issuecomment-339855157,
this patch adds finaliser code to prevent memory leaks from ussl objects,
which is especially useful when memory for a ussl context is allocated
outside the uPy heap. This patch is in-line with the finaliser code found
in many modsocket implementations for various ports.
This feature is configured via MICROPY_PY_USSL_FINALISER and is disabled by
default because there may be issues using it when the ussl state *is*
allocated on the uPy heap, rather than externally.
This allows to configure support for inplace special methods separately,
similar to "normal" and reverse special methods. This is useful, because
inplace methods are "the most optional" ones, for example, if inplace
methods aren't defined, the operation will be executed using normal
methods instead.
As a caveat, __iadd__ and __isub__ are implemented even if
MICROPY_PY_ALL_INPLACE_SPECIAL_METHODS isn't defined. This is similar
to the state of affairs before binary operations refactor, and allows
to run existing tests even if MICROPY_PY_ALL_INPLACE_SPECIAL_METHODS
isn't defined.
This adds a new configuration option to print runtime warnings and errors to
stderr. On Unix, CPython prints warnings and unhandled exceptions to stderr,
so the unix port here is configured to use this option.
The unix port already printed unhandled exceptions on the main thread to
stderr. This patch fixes unhandled exceptions on other threads and warnings
(issue #2838) not printing on stderr.
Additionally, a couple tests needed to be fixed to handle this new behavior.
This is done by also capturing stderr when running tests.
If, for class X, X.__add__(Y) doesn't exist (or returns NotImplemented),
try Y.__radd__(X) instead.
This patch could be simpler, but requires undoing operand swap and
operation switch to get non-confusing error message in case __radd__
doesn't exist.
This patch adds a function utf8_check() to check for a valid UTF-8 encoded
string, and calls it when constructing a str from raw bytes. The feature
is selectable at compile time via MICROPY_PY_BUILTINS_STR_UNICODE_CHECK and
is enabled if unicode is enabled. It costs about 110 bytes on Thumb-2, 150
bytes on Xtensa and 170 bytes on x86-64.
The code conventions suggest using header guards, but do not define how
those should look like and instead point to existing files. However, not
all existing files follow the same scheme, sometimes omitting header guards
altogether, sometimes using non-standard names, making it easy to
accidentally pick a "wrong" example.
This commit ensures that all header files of the MicroPython project (that
were not simply copied from somewhere else) follow the same pattern, that
was already present in the majority of files, especially in the py folder.
The rules are as follows.
Naming convention:
* start with the words MICROPY_INCLUDED
* contain the full path to the file
* replace special characters with _
In addition, there are no empty lines before #ifndef, between #ifndef and
one empty line before #endif. #endif is followed by a comment containing
the name of the guard macro.
py/grammar.h cannot use header guards by design, since it has to be
included multiple times in a single C file. Several other files also do not
need header guards as they are only used internally and guaranteed to be
included only once:
* MICROPY_MPHALPORT_H
* mpconfigboard.h
* mpconfigport.h
* mpthreadport.h
* pin_defs_*.h
* qstrdefs*.h
The implementation is taken from stmhal/input.c, with code added to handle
ctrl-C. This built-in is controlled by MICROPY_PY_BUILTINS_INPUT and is
disabled by default. It uses readline() to capture input but this can be
overridden by defining the mp_hal_readline macro.
The with semantics of this function is close to
pkg_resources.resource_stream() function from setuptools, which
is the canonical way to access non-source files belonging to a package
(resources), regardless of what medium the package uses (e.g. individual
source files vs zip archive). In the case of MicroPython, this function
allows to access resources which are frozen into the executable, besides
accessing resources in the file system.
This is initial stage of the implementation, which actually doesn't
implement "package" part of the semantics, just accesses frozen resources
from "root", or filesystem resource - from current dir.
With this optimisation enabled the compiler optimises the if-else
expression within a return statement. The optimisation reduces bytecode
size by 2 bytes for each use of such a return-if-else statement. Since
such a statement is not often used, and costs bytes for the code, the
feature is disabled by default.
For example the following code:
def f(x):
return 1 if x else 2
compiles to this bytecode with the optimisation disabled (left column is
bytecode offset in bytes):
00 LOAD_FAST 0
01 POP_JUMP_IF_FALSE 8
04 LOAD_CONST_SMALL_INT 1
05 JUMP 9
08 LOAD_CONST_SMALL_INT 2
09 RETURN_VALUE
and to this bytecode with the optimisation enabled:
00 LOAD_FAST 0
01 POP_JUMP_IF_FALSE 6
04 LOAD_CONST_SMALL_INT 1
05 RETURN_VALUE
06 LOAD_CONST_SMALL_INT 2
07 RETURN_VALUE
So the JUMP to RETURN_VALUE is optimised and replaced by RETURN_VALUE,
saving 2 bytes and making the code a bit faster.
It controls the character that's used to (asynchronously) raise a
KeyboardInterrupt exception. Passing "-1" allows to disable the
interception of the interrupt character (as long as a port allows such a
behaviour).
Split this setting from MICROPY_CPYTHON_COMPAT. The idea is to be able to
keep MICROPY_CPYTHON_COMPAT disabled, but still pass more of regression
testsuite. In particular, this fixes last failing test in basics/ for
Zephyr port.
It's configured by MICROPY_PY_UERRNO_ERRORCODE and enabled by default
(since that's the behaviour before this patch).
Without this dict the lookup of errno codes to strings must use the
uerrno module itself.
This improves efficiency of GIL release within the VM, by only doing the
release after a fixed number of jump-opcodes have executed in the current
thread.
This patch implements support for class methods __delattr__ and __setattr__
for customising attribute access. It is controlled by the config option
MICROPY_PY_DELATTR_SETATTR and is disabled by default.
Updated modbuiltin.c to add conditional support for 3-arg calls to
pow() using MICROPY_PY_BUILTINS_POW3 config parameter. Added support in
objint_mpz.c for for optimised implementation.
This provides mp_vfs_XXX functions (eg mount, open, listdir) which are
agnostic to the underlying filesystem type, and just require an object with
the relevant filesystem-like methods (eg .mount, .open, .listidr) which can
then be mounted.
These mp_vfs_XXX functions would typically be used by a port to implement
the "uos" module, and mp_vfs_open would be the builtin open function.
This feature is controlled by MICROPY_VFS, disabled by default.
This is how CPython does it, and it's very useful to help users discover
the available modules for a given port, especially built-in and frozen
modules. The function does not list modules that are in the filesystem
because this would require a fair bit of work to do correctly, and is very
port specific (depending on the filesystem).
import utimeq, utime
# Max queue size, the queue allocated statically on creation
q = utimeq.utimeq(10)
q.push(utime.ticks_ms(), data1, data2)
res = [0, 0, 0]
# Items in res are filled up with results
q.pop(res)
Defining and initialising mp_kbd_exception is boiler-plate code and so the
core runtime can provide it, instead of each port needing to do it
themselves.
The exception object is placed in the VM state rather than on the heap.
sys.exit() is an important function to terminate a program. In particular,
the testsuite relies on it to skip tests (i.e. any other functionality may
be disabled, but sys.exit() is required to at least report that properly).
This patch adds the MICROPY_EMIT_INLINE_XTENSA option, which, when
enabled, allows the @micropython.asm_xtensa decorator to be used.
The following opcodes are currently supported (ax is a register, a0-a15):
ret_n()
callx0(ax)
j(label)
jx(ax)
beqz(ax, label)
bnez(ax, label)
mov(ax, ay)
movi(ax, imm) # imm can be full 32-bit, uses l32r if needed
and_(ax, ay, az)
or_(ax, ay, az)
xor(ax, ay, az)
add(ax, ay, az)
sub(ax, ay, az)
mull(ax, ay, az)
l8ui(ax, ay, imm)
l16ui(ax, ay, imm)
l32i(ax, ay, imm)
s8i(ax, ay, imm)
s16i(ax, ay, imm)
s32i(ax, ay, imm)
l16si(ax, ay, imm)
addi(ax, ay, imm)
ball(ax, ay, label)
bany(ax, ay, label)
bbc(ax, ay, label)
bbs(ax, ay, label)
beq(ax, ay, label)
bge(ax, ay, label)
bgeu(ax, ay, label)
blt(ax, ay, label)
bnall(ax, ay, label)
bne(ax, ay, label)
bnone(ax, ay, label)
Upon entry to the assembly function the registers a0, a12, a13, a14 are
pushed to the stack and the stack pointer (a1) decreased by 16. Upon
exit, these registers and the stack pointer are restored, and ret.n is
executed to return to the caller (caller address is in a0).
Note that the ABI for the Xtensa emitters is non-windowing.
Implementations of persistent-code reader are provided for POSIX systems
and systems using FatFS. Macros to use these are MICROPY_READER_POSIX and
MICROPY_READER_FATFS respectively. If an alternative implementation is
needed then a port can define the function mp_reader_new_file.
As long as a port implement mp_hal_sleep_ms(), mp_hal_ticks_ms(), etc.
functions, it can just use standard implementations of utime.sleel_ms(),
utime.ticks_ms(), etc. Python-level functions.
This new config option allows to control whether MicroPython uses its own
internal printf or not (if not, an external one should be linked in).
Accompanying this new option is the inclusion of lib/utils/printf.c in the
core list of source files, so that ports no longer need to include it
themselves.
The idea is that all ports can use these helper methods and only need to
provide initialisation of the SPI bus, as well as a single transfer
function. The coding pattern follows the stream protocol and helper
methods.
There can be stray pointers in memory blocks that are not properly zero'd
after allocation. This patch adds a new config option to always zero all
allocated memory (via gc_alloc and gc_realloc) and hence help to eliminate
stray pointers.
See issue #2195.
To filter out even prototypes of mp_stream_posix_*() functions, which
require POSIX types like ssize_t & off_t, which may be not available in
some ports.
Something like:
if foo == "bar":
will be always false if foo is b"bar". In CPython, warning is issued if
interpreter is started as "python3 -b". In MicroPython,
MICROPY_PY_STR_BYTES_CMP_WARN setting controls it.
Currently, MicroPython runs GC when it could not allocate a block of memory,
which happens when heap is exhausted. However, that policy can't work well
with "inifinity" heaps, e.g. backed by a virtual memory - there will be a
lot of swap thrashing long before VM will be exhausted. Instead, in such
cases "allocation threshold" policy is used: a GC is run after some number of
allocations have been made. Details vary, for example, number or total amount
of allocations can be used, threshold may be self-adjusting based on GC
outcome, etc.
This change implements a simple variant of such policy for MicroPython. Amount
of allocated memory so far is used for threshold, to make it useful to typical
finite-size, and small, heaps as used with MicroPython ports. And such GC policy
is indeed useful for such types of heaps too, as it allows to better control
fragmentation. For example, if a threshold is set to half size of heap, then
for an application which usually makes big number of small allocations, that
will (try to) keep half of heap memory in a nice defragmented state for an
occasional large allocation.
For an application which doesn't exhibit such behavior, there won't be any
visible effects, except for GC running more frequently, which however may
affect performance. To address this, the GC threshold is configurable, and
by default is off so far. It's configured with gc.threshold(amount_in_bytes)
call (can be queries without an argument).
Disabled by default, enabled in unix port. Need for this method easily
pops up when working with text UI/reporting, and coding workalike
manually again and again counter-productive.