Commits on Jul 1, 2022

1. fix(swingset): stop using a persistent kernel bundle …

   Previously, the kernel sources were bundled during
   `initializeSwingset()`, and stored in the kvStore portion of the
   swingstore kernelDB. It was read from that DB each time
   makeSwingsetController() launched the application process.
   
   That ensured the kernel behavior would remain consistent (and
   deterministic) even if the user's source tree changed. Using a
   persistent kernel bundle also speeds up application launch: we save
   about 1.8s by not re-running `bundleSource` on each launch.
   
   Once upon a time I thought this consistency was important/useful, but
   now I see that it causes more problems than it's worth. In particular,
   upgrading a chain requires an awkward "rekernelize" action to replace
   the kernel bundle in the database. And we believe we can reclaim about
   1.0s per launch by moving to a not-yet-written `importLocation()` Endo
   tool that loads module graphs from disk without serializing the
   archive in the middle.
   
   This patch changes swingset to stop using a persistent kernel
   bundle. Each application launch (i.e. `makeSwingsetController()` call)
   re-bundles the kernel sources just before importing that bundle, so
   that updated source trees are automatically picked up without
   additional API calls or rekernelize steps. The bundle is no longer
   stored in the kvStore.
   
   The other bundles (vats, devices, xsnap helpers) are still created
   during `initializeSwingset` and stored in the DB, since these become
   part of the deterministic history of each vat (#4376 and #5703 will
   inform changes to how those bundles are managed). Only the kernel
   bundle has become non-persistent.
   
   Bundling is slow enough that many unit tests pre-bundle both the
   kernel and the sources of built-in vats, devices, and xsnap helper
   bundles. This provides a considerable speedup for tests that build (or
   launch) multiple kernels within a single test file. These
   `kernelBundles` are passed into `initializationOptions`, which then
   bypassed the swingset-bundles-it-for-you code. This saves a minute or
   two when running the full swingset test suite.
   
   Unit tests can still use `initializationOptions` to amortize bundling
   costs for the non-kernel bundles. `runtimeOptions` now accepts a
   `kernelBundle` member to amortize bundling the kernel itself. Tests
   which use this trick and also use `makeSwingsetController()` need to
   be updated (else they'll run 1.8s slower). All such tests were inside
   `packages/SwingSet/test/` and have been updated, which would otherwise
   cause the test suite to run about 50-60s slower.
   
   The other agoric-sdk packages that do swingset-style tests are mostly
   using the deprecated `buildVatController()`, whose options continue to
   accept both kinds of bundles, and do not need changes.
   
   closes #5679

   

   warner committed Jul 1, 2022
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