C++ JIT compiliation using asmjit

[peterclemenko]

It might be worth investigating using asmjit https://code.google.com/p/asmjit/ as a manner of doing runtime compilation of C++ code. This might help with C++ plugin distribution.

[cadaver]

Note that this is only an assembler library, so it would have to be coupled with a C++ compiler. Furthermore actually compiling C++ code at runtime (even if it was possible) would require shipping all the include files of used third party libraries + Tundra core modules.

[peterclemenko]

It is possible, unreal engine does it.

cadaver notifications@github.com wrote:

Note that this is only an assembler library, so it would have to be
coupled with a C++ compiler. Furthermore actually compiling C++ code at
runtime (even if it was possible) would require shipping all the
include files of used third party libraries + Tundra core modules.

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
#649 (comment)

Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

[peterclemenko]

I should explicitly note however that odds are this is a bad idea security wise and should only be implemented if a way we're found to sandbox it.

cadaver notifications@github.com wrote:

Note that this is only an assembler library, so it would have to be
coupled with a C++ compiler. Furthermore actually compiling C++ code at
runtime (even if it was possible) would require shipping all the
include files of used third party libraries + Tundra core modules.

---

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
#649 (comment)

Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

[cadaver]

It is true that UE4 does runtime compilation, however what I've seen it has been used to tweak the game code, which interfaces with the engine through its own interfaces. A Tundra plugin on the other hand needs full access to the C/C++ standard library, in addition to the Tundra core and the third party libraries.

Certainly it is doable, but could be an engineering effort on the man-year scale.

For example, if Tundra was to embed clang, which has a nice license, then we would require to always compile the core libraries + dependencies with clang to make sure the C++ ABI and STL implementation matches.

Note that the http://runtimecompiledcplusplus.blogspot.com library, which is available as open source, requires the user to have a C++ compiler installed in the system, but we naturally can not require this.

I'm very tempted to close this as unfeasible in practice.

[cadaver]

Also, I'm quite sure the end-user runtime of UE4 does not include a C++ compiler. This means the don't need to care how large the files required by the compiler are. We on the other hand would require it on the end-user installs.

[antont]

was just thinking that perhaps using this and some other optimization is sometimes possible on servers, or in a CAVE installation where there sometimes is not distribution at all or at least extra work for setting up an efficient env is feasible. also sandboxing / security considerations can be much easier.

just a general observation.