MethodTable/Cache PR updates

base/methodshow.jl

@@ -365,7 +365,7 @@ end
 
 show(io::IO, ms::MethodList) = show_method_table(io, ms)
 show(io::IO, ::MIME"text/plain", ms::MethodList) = show_method_table(io, ms)
-show(io::IO, mt::Core.MethodTable) = show_method_table(io, MethodList(mt))
+show(io::IO, mt::Core.MethodTable) = print(io, mt.module, ".", mt.name, " is a Core.MethodTable with ", length(mt), " methods.")
 
 function inbase(m::Module)
     if m == Base
@@ -470,8 +470,6 @@ function show(io::IO, mime::MIME"text/html", ms::MethodList)
     print(io, "</ul>")
 end
 
-show(io::IO, mime::MIME"text/html", mt::Core.MethodTable) = show(io, mime, MethodList(mt))
-
 # pretty-printing of AbstractVector{Method}
 function show(io::IO, mime::MIME"text/plain", mt::AbstractVector{Method})
     last_shown_line_infos = get(io, :last_shown_line_infos, nothing)

doc/src/devdocs/functions.md

@@ -6,21 +6,17 @@ This document will explain how functions, method definitions, and method tables
 ## Method Tables
 
 Every function in Julia is a generic function. A generic function is conceptually a single function,
-but consists of many definitions, or methods. The methods of a generic function are stored in
-a method table. Method tables (type `MethodTable`) are associated with `TypeName`s. A `TypeName`
-describes a family of parameterized types. For example `Complex{Float32}` and `Complex{Float64}`
-share the same `Complex` type name object.
-
-All objects in Julia are potentially callable, because every object has a type, which in turn
-has a `TypeName`.
+but consists of many definitions, or methods. The methods of a generic function are stored in a
+method table. There is one global method table (type `MethodTable`) named `Core.GlobalMethods`. Any
+default operation on methods (such as calls) uses that table.
 
 ## [Function calls](@id Function-calls)
 
-Given the call `f(x, y)`, the following steps are performed: first, the method cache to use is
-accessed as `typeof(f).name.mt`. Second, an argument tuple type is formed, `Tuple{typeof(f), typeof(x), typeof(y)}`.
-Note that the type of the function itself is the first element. This is because the type might
-have parameters, and so needs to take part in dispatch. This tuple type is looked up in the method
-table.
+Given the call `f(x, y)`, the following steps are performed: First, a tuple type is formed,
+`Tuple{typeof(f), typeof(x), typeof(y)}`. Note that the type of the function itself is the first
+element. This is because the function itself participates symmetrically in method lookup with the
+other arguments. This tuple type is looked up in the global method table. However, the system can
+then cache the results, so these steps can be skipped later for similar lookups.
 
 This dispatch process is performed by `jl_apply_generic`, which takes two arguments: a pointer
 to an array of the values `f`, `x`, and `y`, and the number of values (in this case 3).
@@ -49,15 +45,6 @@ jl_value_t *jl_call(jl_function_t *f, jl_value_t **args, int32_t nargs);
 
 Given the above dispatch process, conceptually all that is needed to add a new method is (1) a
 tuple type, and (2) code for the body of the method. `jl_method_def` implements this operation.
-`jl_method_table_for` is called to extract the relevant method table from what would be
-the type of the first argument. This is much more complicated than the corresponding procedure
-during dispatch, since the argument tuple type might be abstract. For example, we can define:
-
-```julia
-(::Union{Foo{Int},Foo{Int8}})(x) = 0
-```
-
-which works since all possible matching methods would belong to the same method table.
 
 ## Creating generic functions
 
@@ -94,9 +81,7 @@ end
 
 ## Constructors
 
-A constructor call is just a call to a type. The method table for `Type` contains all
-constructor definitions. All subtypes of `Type` (`Type`, `UnionAll`, `Union`, and `DataType`)
-currently share a method table via special arrangement.
+A constructor call is just a call to a type, to a method defined on `Type{T}`.
 
 ## Builtins
 
@@ -128,18 +113,14 @@ import Markdown
     Markdown.parse
 ```
 
-These are all singleton objects whose types are subtypes of `Builtin`, which is a subtype of
-`Function`. Their purpose is to expose entry points in the run time that use the "jlcall" calling
-convention:
+These are mostly singleton objects all of whose types are subtypes of `Builtin`, which is a
+subtype of `Function`. Their purpose is to expose entry points in the run time that use the
+"jlcall" calling convention:
 
 ```c
 jl_value_t *(jl_value_t*, jl_value_t**, uint32_t)
 ```
 
-The method tables of builtins are empty. Instead, they have a single catch-all method cache entry
-(`Tuple{Vararg{Any}}`) whose jlcall fptr points to the correct function. This is kind of a hack
-but works reasonably well.
-
 ## Keyword arguments
 
 Keyword arguments work by adding methods to the kwcall function. This function
@@ -228,18 +209,13 @@ sees an argument in the `Function` type hierarchy passed to a slot declared as `
 it behaves as if the `@nospecialize` annotation were applied. This heuristic seems to be extremely
 effective in practice.
 
-The next issue concerns the structure of method cache hash tables. Empirical studies show that
-the vast majority of dynamically-dispatched calls involve one or two arguments. In turn, many
-of these cases can be resolved by considering only the first argument. (Aside: proponents of single
-dispatch would not be surprised by this at all. However, this argument means "multiple dispatch
-is easy to optimize in practice", and that we should therefore use it, *not* "we should use single
-dispatch"!) So the method cache uses the type of the first argument as its primary key. Note,
-however, that this corresponds to the *second* element of the tuple type for a function call (the
-first element being the type of the function itself). Typically, type variation in head position
-is extremely low -- indeed, the majority of functions belong to singleton types with no parameters.
-However, this is not the case for constructors, where a single method table holds constructors
-for every type. Therefore the `Type` method table is special-cased to use the *first* tuple type
-element instead of the second.
+The next issue concerns the structure of method tables. Empirical studies show that the vast
+majority of dynamically-dispatched calls involve one or two arguments. In turn, many of these cases
+can be resolved by considering only the first argument. (Aside: proponents of single dispatch would
+not be surprised by this at all. However, this argument means "multiple dispatch is easy to optimize
+in practice", and that we should therefore use it, *not* "we should use single dispatch"!). So the
+method table and cache splits up on the structure based on a left-to-right decision tree so allow
+efficient nearest-neighbor searches.
 
 The front end generates type declarations for all closures. Initially, this was implemented by
 generating normal type declarations. However, this produced an extremely large number of constructors,

doc/src/devdocs/types.md

@@ -176,7 +176,12 @@ julia> dump(Array{Int,1}.name)
 TypeName
   name: Symbol Array
   module: Module Core
-  names: empty SimpleVector
+  singletonname: Symbol Array
+  names: SimpleVector
+    1: Symbol ref
+    2: Symbol size
+  atomicfields: Ptr{Nothing}(0x0000000000000000)
+  constfields: Ptr{Nothing}(0x0000000000000000)
   wrapper: UnionAll
     var: TypeVar
       name: Symbol T
@@ -188,20 +193,20 @@ TypeName
         lb: Union{}
         ub: abstract type Any
       body: mutable struct Array{T, N} <: DenseArray{T, N}
+  Typeofwrapper: abstract type Type{Array} <: Any
   cache: SimpleVector
     ...
-
   linearcache: SimpleVector
     ...
-
-  hash: Int64 -7900426068641098781
-  mt: MethodTable
-    name: Symbol Array
-    defs: Nothing nothing
-    cache: Nothing nothing
-    module: Module Core
-    : Int64 0
-    : Int64 0
+  hash: Int64 2594190783455944385
+  backedges: #undef
+  partial: #undef
+  max_args: Int32 0
+  n_uninitialized: Int32 0
+  flags: UInt8 0x02
+  cache_entry_count: UInt8 0x00
+  max_methods: UInt8 0x00
+  constprop_heuristic: UInt8 0x00
 ```
 
 In this case, the relevant field is `wrapper`, which holds a reference to the top-level type used

stdlib/Serialization/src/Serialization.jl

@@ -469,15 +469,13 @@ end
 
 function serialize(s::AbstractSerializer, mt::Core.MethodTable)
     serialize_type(s, typeof(mt))
-    serialize(s, mt.cache)
+    serialize(s, mt.name)
+    serialize(s, mt.module)
     nothing
 end
 
 function serialize(s::AbstractSerializer, mc::Core.MethodCache)
-    serialize_type(s, typeof(mc))
-    serialize(s, mc.name)
-    serialize(s, mc.module)
-    nothing
+    error("cannot serialize MethodCache objects")
 end
 
 
@@ -1134,16 +1132,9 @@ function deserialize(s::AbstractSerializer, ::Type{Method})
 end
 
 function deserialize(s::AbstractSerializer, ::Type{Core.MethodTable})
-    mc = deserialize(s)::Core.MethodCache
-    mc === Core.GlobalMethods.cache && return Core.GlobalMethods
-    return getglobal(mc.mod, mc.name)::Core.MethodTable
-end
-
-function deserialize(s::AbstractSerializer, ::Type{Core.MethodCache})
     name = deserialize(s)::Symbol
     mod = deserialize(s)::Module
-    f = Base.unwrap_unionall(getglobal(mod, name))
-    return (f::Core.MethodTable).cache
+    return getglobal(mod, name)::Core.MethodTable
 end
 
 function deserialize(s::AbstractSerializer, ::Type{Core.MethodInstance})