K Foreign Function Interface

The K Foreign Function Interface (FFI) module provides a way to call native functions directly from a K semantics using the C ABI. It also provides utilities for allocating and deallocating byte buffers with static addresses that are suitable for being passed to native code.

It is built off of the underlying libffi library (https://sourceware.org/libffi/) and is subject to some of the same limitations as that library. Bear in mind, because this library exposes a number of unsafe C APIs directly, misuse of the library is likely to lead to memory corruption in your interpreter and can cause segmentation faults or corrupted term representations that lead to undefined behavior at runtime.

k
requires "domains.md"

module FFI-SYNTAX
  imports private LIST

The FFIType sort is used to declare the native C ABI types of operands passed to the #ffiCall function. These types roughly correspond to the types declared in ffi.h by libffi.

k
  syntax FFIType ::= "#void" [symbol(#ffi_void)]
                  | "#uint8" [symbol(#ffi_uint8)]
                  | "#sint8" [symbol(#ffi_sint8)]
                  | "#uint16" [symbol(#ffi_uint16)]
                  | "#sint16" [symbol(#ffi_sint16)]
                  | "#uint32" [symbol(#ffi_uint32)]
                  | "#sint32" [symbol(#ffi_sint32)]
                  | "#uint64" [symbol(#ffi_uint64)]
                  | "#sint64" [symbol(#ffi_sint64)]
                  | "#float" [symbol(#ffi_float)]
                  | "#double" [symbol(#ffi_double)]
                  | "#uchar" [symbol(#ffi_uchar)]
                  | "#schar" [symbol(#ffi_schar)]
                  | "#ushort" [symbol(#ffi_ushort)]
                  | "#sshort" [symbol(#ffi_sshort)]
                  | "#uint" [symbol(#ffi_uint)]
                  | "#sint" [symbol(#ffi_sint)]
                  | "#ulong" [symbol(#ffi_ulong)]
                  | "#slong" [symbol(#ffi_slong)]
                  | "#longdouble" [symbol(#ffi_longdouble)]
                  | "#pointer" [symbol(#ffi_pointer)]
                  | "#complexfloat" [symbol(#ffi_complexfloat)]
                  | "#complexdouble" [symbol(#ffi_complexdouble)]
                  | "#complexlongdouble" [symbol(#ffi_complexlongdouble)]
                  | "#struct" "(" List ")" [symbol(#ffi_struct)]
endmodule

module FFI
  imports FFI-SYNTAX
  imports private BYTES
  imports private STRING
  imports private BOOL
  imports private LIST
  imports private INT

FFI Calls

The #ffiCall functions are designed to call a native C ABI function and return a native result. They come in three variants:

Non-variadic

In the first variant, #ffiCall(Address, Args, ArgTypes, ReturnType) takes an integer address of a function (which can be obtained from #functionAddress), a List of Bytes containing the arguments of the function, a List of FFITypes containing the types of the parameters of the function, and an FFIType containing the return type of the function, and returns the return value of the function as a Bytes.

k
  syntax Bytes ::= "#ffiCall" "(" Int "," List "," List "," FFIType ")" [function, hook(FFI.call)]

Variadic

In the second variant, #ffiCall(Address, Args, FixedTypes, VariadicTypes, ReturnType takes an integer address of a function, a List of Bytes containing the arguments of the call, a List of FFITypes containing the types of the fixed parameters of the function, a List of FFITypes containing the types of the variadic parameters of the function, and an FFIType containing the return type of the function, and returns the return value of the function as a Bytes.

k
  syntax Bytes ::= "#ffiCall" "(" Int "," List "," List "," List "," FFIType ")" [function, hook(FFI.call_variadic)]

Generic

In the third variant, #ffiCall(IsVariadic, Address, Args, ArgTypes, NFixed, ReturnType takes a boolean indicating whether the function is variadic or not, an integer address of a function, a List of Bytes containing the arguments of the call, a List of FFITypes containing the parameter typess of the call followed by the types of the variadic arguments of the call, if any, an Int containing how many of the arguments of the call are fixed or not, and an FFIType containing the return type of the function, and returns the return value of the function as a Bytes.

k
  syntax Bytes ::= "#ffiCall" "(" Bool "," Int "," List "," List "," Int "," FFIType ")" [function]

  rule #ffiCall(false, Addr::Int, Args::List, Types::List, _, Ret::FFIType) => #ffiCall(Addr, Args, Types, Ret)
  rule #ffiCall(true, Addr::Int, Args::List, Types::List, NFixed::Int, Ret::FFIType) => #ffiCall(Addr, Args, range(Types, 0, size(Types) -Int NFixed), range(Types, NFixed, 0), Ret)

Symbol Lookup

The FFI module provides a mechanism to look up any function symbol and return that function's address.

k
  syntax Int ::= "#functionAddress" "(" String ")" [function, hook(FFI.address)]

Direct Memory Management

Most memory used by the LLVM backend to represent terms is managed automatically via garbage collection. However, a consequence of this is that a particular term does not have a fixed address across its entire lifetime in most cases. Sometimes this is undesirable, especially if you intend for the address of the memory to be taken by the semantics or if you intend to pass this memory directly to native code. As a result, the FFI module exposes the following unsafe APIs for memory management. Note that use of these APIs leaves the burden of memory management completely on the user, and thus misuse of these functions can lead to things like use-after-free and other memory corruption bugs.

Allocation

#alloc(Key, Size, Align) will allocate Size bytes with an alignment requirement of Align (which must be a power of two), and return it as a Bytes term. The memory is uniquely identified by its key and that key will be used later to free the memory. The memory is not implicitly freed by garbage collection; failure to call #free on the memory at a later date can lead to memory leaks.

k
  syntax Bytes ::= "#alloc" "(" KItem "," Int "," Int ")" [function, hook(FFI.alloc)]

Addressing

#addess(B) will return an Int representing the address of the first byte of B, which must be a Bytes. Unless the Bytes term was allocated by #alloc, the return value is unspecified and may not be the same across multipl invocations on the same byte buffer. However, it is guaranteed that memory allocated by #alloc will have the same address throughout its lifetime.

k
  syntax Int ::= "#address" "(" Bytes ")" [function, hook(FFI.bytes_address)]

Deallocation

#free(Key) will free the memory of the Bytes object that was allocated by a previous call to #alloc. If Key was not used in a previous call to #alloc, or the memory was already freed, no action is taken. It will generate undefined behavior if the Bytes term returned by the previous call to #alloc is still referenced by any other term in the configuration or a currently evaluating rule. The function returns .K.

k
  syntax K ::= "#free" "(" KItem ")" [function, hook(FFI.free)]

Reading

#nativeRead(Addr, Mem) will read native memory at address Addr into Mem, reading exactly lengthBytes(Mem) bytes. This will generate undefined behavior if Addr does not point to a readable segment of memory at least lengthBytes(Mem) bytes long.

k
  syntax K ::= "#nativeRead" "(" Int "," Bytes ")" [function, hook(FFI.read)]

Writing

#nativeWrite(Addr, Mem) will write the contents of Mem to native memory at address Addr. The memory will be read prior to being written, and a write will only happen if the memory has a different value than the current value of Mem. This will generate undefined behavior if Addr does not point to a readable segment of memory at least lengthBytes(Mem) bytes long, or if the memory at address Addr has a different value than currently contained in Mem, and the memory in question is not writeable.

k
  syntax K ::= "#nativeWrite" "(" Int "," Bytes ")" [function, hook(FFI.write)]
endmodule