• C
    Support multiple shells in a single process. (#4932) · 6baff4c8
    Chinmay Garde 提交于
    * Support multiple shells in a single process.
    
    The Flutter Engine currently works by initializing a singleton shell
    instance. This shell has to be created on the platform thread. The shell
    is responsible for creating the 3 main threads used by Flutter (UI, IO,
    GPU) as well as initializing the Dart VM. The shell, references to task
    runners of the main threads as well as all snapshots used for VM
    initialization are stored in singleton objects. The Flutter shell only
    creates the threads, rasterizers, contexts, etc. to fully support a
    single Flutter application. Current support for multiple Flutter
    applications is achieved by making multiple applications share the same
    resources (via the platform views mechanism).
    
    This scheme has the following limitations:
    
    * The shell is a singleton and there is no way to tear it down. Once you
      run a Flutter application in a process, all resources managed by it
      will remain referenced till process termination.
    * The threads on which the shell performs its operations are all
      singletons. These threads are never torn down and multiple Flutter
      applications (if present) have to compete with one another on these
      threads.
    * Resources referenced by the Dart VM are leaked because the VM isn't
      shutdown even when there are no more Flutter views.
    * The shell as a target does not compile on Fuchsia. The Fuchsia content
      handler uses specific dependencies of the shell to rebuild all the
      shell dependencies on its own. This leads to differences in frame
      scheduling, VM setup, service protocol endpoint setup, tracing, etc..
      Fuchsia is very much a second class citizen in this world.
    * Since threads and message loops are managed by the engine, the engine
      has to know about threading and platform message loop interop on each
      supported platform.
    
    Specific updates in this patch:
    
    * The shell is no longer a singleton and the embedder holds the unique
      reference to the shell.
    * Shell setup and teardown is deterministic.
    * Threads are no longer managed by the shell. Instead, the shell is
      given a task runner configuration by the embedder.
    * Since the shell does not own its threads, the embedder can control
      threads and the message loops operating on these threads. The shell is
      only given references to the task runners that execute tasks on these
      threads.
    * The shell only needs task runner references. These references can be
      to the same task runner. So, if the embedder thinks that a particular
      Flutter application would not need all the threads, it can pass
      references to the same task runner. This effectively makes Flutter
      application run in single threaded mode. There are some places in the
      shell that make synchronous calls, these sites have been updated to
      ensure that they don’t deadlock.
    * The test runner and the headless Dart code runner are now Flutter
      applications that are effectively single threaded (since they don’t
      have rendering concerns of big-boy Flutter application).
    * The embedder has to guarantee that the threads and outlive the shell.
      It is easy for the embedder to make that guarantee because shell
      termination is deterministic.
    * The embedder can create as many shell as it wants. Typically it
      creates a shell per Flutter application with its own task runner
      configuration. Most embedders obtain these task runners from threads
      dedicated to the shell. But, it is entirely possible that the embedder
      can obtain these task runners from a thread pool.
    * There can only be one Dart VM in the process. The numerous shell
      interact with one another to manage the VM lifecycle. Once the last
      shell goes away, the VM does as well and hence all resources
      associated with the VM are collected.
    * The shell as a target can now compile and run on Fuchsia. The current
      content handler has been removed from the Flutter engine source tree
      and a new implementation has been written that uses the new shell
      target.
    * Isolate management has been significantly overhauled. There are no
      owning references to Dart isolates within the shell. The VM owns the
      only strong reference to the Dart isolate. The isolate that has window
      bindings is now called the root isolate. Child isolates can now be
      created from the root isolate and their bindings and thread
      configurations are now inherited from the root isolate.
    * Terminating the shell terminates its root isolates as well as all the
      isolates spawned by this isolate. This is necessary be shell shutdown
      is deterministic and the embedder is free to collect the threads on
      which the isolates execute their tasks (and listen for mircrotasks
      flushes on).
    * Launching the root isolate is now significantly overhauled. The shell
      side (non-owning) reference to an isolate is now a little state
      machine and illegal state transitions should be impossible (barring
      construction issues). This is the only way to manage Dart isolates in
      the shell (the shell does not use the C API is dart_api.h anymore).
    * Once an isolate is launched, it must be prepared (and hence move to
      the ready phase) by associating a snapshot with the same. This
      snapshot can either be a precompiled snapshot, kernel snapshot, script
      snapshot or source file. Depending on the kind of data specified as a
      snapshot as well as the capabilities of the VM running in the process,
      isolate preparation can fail preparation with the right message.
    * Asset management has been significantly overhauled. All asset
      resolution goes through an abstract asset resolver interface. An asset
      manager implements this interface and manages one or more child asset
      resolvers. These asset resolvers typically resolve assets from
      directories, ZIP files (legacy FLX assets if provided), APK bundles,
      FDIO namespaces, etc…
    * Each launch of the shell requires a separate and fully configured
      asset resolver. This is necessary because launching isolates for the
      engine may require resolving snapshots as assets from the asset
      resolver. Asset resolvers can be shared by multiple launch instances
      in multiple shells and need to be thread safe.
    * References to the command line object have been removed from the
      shell. Instead, the shell only takes a settings object that may be
      configured from the command line. This makes it easy for embedders and
      platforms that don’t have a command line (Fuchsia) to configure the
      shell. Consequently, there is only one spot where the various switches
      are read from the command line (by the embedder and not the shell) to
      form the settings object.
    * All platform now respect the log tag (this was done only by Android
      till now) and each shell instance have its own log tag. This makes
      logs from multiple Flutter application in the same process (mainly
      Fuchsia) more easily decipherable.
    * The per shell IO task runner now has a new component that is
      unfortunately named the IOManager. This component manages the IO
      GrContext (used for asynchronous texture uploads) that cooperates with
      the GrContext on the GPU task runner associated with the shell. The
      IOManager is also responsible for flushing tasks that collect Skia
      objects that reference GPU resources during deterministic shell
      shutdown.
    * The embedder now has to be careful to only enable Blink on a single
      instance of the shell. Launching the legacy text layout and rendering
      engine multiple times is will trip assertions. The entirety of this
      runtime has been separated out into a separate object and can be
      removed in one go when the migration to libtxt is complete.
    * There is a new test target for the various C++ objects that the shell
      uses to interact with the Dart VM (the shell no longer use the C API
      in dart_api.h). This allows engine developers to test VM/Isolate
      initialization and teardown without having the setup a full shell
      instance.
    * There is a new test target for the testing a single shell instances
      without having to configure and launch an entire VM and associated
      root isolate.
    * Mac, Linux & Windows used to have different target that created the
      flutter_tester referenced by the tool. This has now been converted
      into a single target that compiles on all platforms.
    * WeakPointers vended by the fml::WeakPtrFactory(notice the difference
      between the same class in the fxl namespace) add threading checks on
      each use. This is enabled by getting rid of the “re-origination”
      feature of the WeakPtrFactory in the fxl namespace. The side effect of
      this is that all non-thread safe components have to be created, used
      and destroyed on the same thread. Numerous thread safety issues were
      caught by this extra assertion and have now been fixed.
      * Glossary of components that are only safe on a specific thread (and
        have the fml variants of the WeakPtrFactory):
        * Platform Thread: Shell
        * UI Thread: Engine, RuntimeDelegate, DartIsolate, Animator
        * GPU Thread: Rasterizer, Surface
        * IO Thread: IOManager
    
    This patch was reviewed in smaller chunks in the following pull
    requests. All comments from the pulls requests has been incorporated
    into this patch:
    
    * flutter/assets: https://github.com/flutter/engine/pull/4829
    * flutter/common: https://github.com/flutter/engine/pull/4830
    * flutter/content_handler: https://github.com/flutter/engine/pull/4831
    * flutter/flow: https://github.com/flutter/engine/pull/4832
    * flutter/fml: https://github.com/flutter/engine/pull/4833
    * flutter/lib/snapshot: https://github.com/flutter/engine/pull/4834
    * flutter/lib/ui: https://github.com/flutter/engine/pull/4835
    * flutter/runtime: https://github.com/flutter/engine/pull/4836
    * flutter/shell: https://github.com/flutter/engine/pull/4837
    * flutter/synchronization: https://github.com/flutter/engine/pull/4838
    * flutter/testing: https://github.com/flutter/engine/pull/4839
    6baff4c8
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