This patch: - Moves the snapshot building code to src/ so that we can reuse it later when generating custom snapshots from an entry point accepted by the node binary. - Create a SnapshotData struct that incorporates all the data useful for a snapshot blob, including both the V8 data and the Node.js data. PR-URL: https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/38902 Reviewed-By: Chengzhong Wu <legendecas@gmail.com>
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Node.js startup snapshot builder
This is the V8 startup snapshot builder of Node.js. Not to be confused with V8's own snapshot builder, which builds a snapshot containing JavaScript builtins, this builds a snapshot containing Node.js builtins that can be deserialized on top of V8's own startup snapshot. When Node.js is launched, instead of executing code to bootstrap, it can deserialize the context from an embedded snapshot, which readily contains the result of the bootstrap, so that Node.js can start up faster.
Currently only the main context of the main Node.js instance supports snapshot deserialization, and the snapshot does not yet cover the entire bootstrap process. Work is being done to expand the support.
How it's built and used
The snapshot builder is built with the node_mksnapshot
target in node.gyp
when node_use_node_snapshot
is set to true, which is currently done by
default.
In the default build of the Node.js executable, to embed a V8 startup snapshot
into the Node.js executable, libnode
is first built with these unresolved
symbols:
node::NodeMainInstance::GetEmbeddedSnapshotBlob
node::NodeMainInstance::GetIsolateDataIndices
Then the node_mksnapshot
executable is built with C++ files in this
directory, as well as src/node_snapshot_stub.cc
which defines the unresolved
symbols.
node_mksnapshot
is run to generate a C++ file
<(SHARED_INTERMEDIATE_DIR)/node_snapshot.cc
that is similar to
src/node_snapshot_stub.cc
in structure, but contains the snapshot data
written as static char array literals. Then libnode
is built with
node_snapshot.cc
to produce the final Node.js executable with the snapshot
data embedded.
For debugging, Node.js can be built without Node.js's own snapshot if
--without-node-snapshot
is passed to configure
. A Node.js executable
with Node.js snapshot embedded can also be launched without deserializing
from it if the command line argument --no-node-snapshot
is passed.