component manager

Reviewed on: 2019-07-12

Component manager is the program which runs and manages v2 components. More about what components are, what semantics they provide, and how to use them is available here.

Building

Component manager should be included in all builds of Fuchsia, but if missing can be added to builds by including --with //src/sys/component_manager to the fx set invocation.

Faster builds

Rust optimizations (and, in particular, link time optimizations) require a significant amount of time, causing slow builds. For faster local development, adding the following arguments to your fx set line will significantly reduce build times by disabling optimizations:

fx set ... --args rust_override_opt='"0"' --args rust_override_lto='"none"'

Running

Component manager runs by default on all Fuchsia builds.

Testing

Unit tests for component manager are available in the component_manager_tests package.

$ fx test component_manager_tests

Integration tests are also available in the following packages:

• hub_integration_test
• storage_integration_test
• routing_integration_test
• elf_runner_test
• no_pkg_resolver_test

Source layout

The entrypoint is located in src/main.rs, and the core model implementation is under src/model/. Unit tests are co-located with the code, with the exception of src/model/ which has unit tests in src/model/tests/. Integration tests live in tests/.

Development best practices

Arc<Realm> and fasync::spawn

Problem

Many parts of the code need access to a Realm. Some of those are long-running asynchronous operations, such as hosting a pseudo-fs directory with a closure (see //src/sys/lib/directory_broker). These operations are executed on the global executor through fasync::spawn.

These closures should never capture an Arc<Realm>, as the closures lifetime is not bound to the Realm, even though it is conceptually tied to the life of Realm. This can lead to memory leaks / reference cycles.

Solution

Use WeakRealm, which wraps a Weak<Realm> (weak pointer to Realm) along with the AbsoluteMoniker of the realm, for good error-reporting when the Realm has been destroyed.

use crate::model::realm::{Realm, WeakRealm};

let realm: Arc<Realm> = model.look_up_realm(...)?;
let captured_realm: WeakRealm = realm.as_weak();
fasync::spawn(async move {
    let realm = match captured_realm.upgrade() {
        Ok(realm) => realm,
        Err(e) => {
            log::error!("failed to upgrade WeakRealm: {}", e);
            return;
        }
    };
    ...
});