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v4.0.0-beta.1 - TypeScript / EVM Modularization / Promises / Istanbul Process Start
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@holgerd77 holgerd77 released this 23 Mar 12:22
· 1501 commits to master since this release
v4.0.0-beta.1
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Learn about vigilant mode.

Since changes in this release are pretty deep reaching and broadly distributed, we will first drop out one or several beta releases until we are confident on both external API as well as inner structural changes. See
v4 branch for some major entry point into the work on the release.

It is highly recommended that you do some testing of your library against this and following beta versions and give us some feedback!

These will be the main release notes for the v4 feature updates, subsequent beta releases and the final release will just publish the delta changes and point here for reference.

Breaking changes in the release notes are preeceeded with [BREAKING], do a search for an overview.

The outstanding work of @s1na has to be mentioned here. He has done the very large portion of the coding and without him this release wouldn't have been possible. Thanks Sina! 🙂

So what's new?

TypeScript

This is the first TypeScript release of the VM (yay! 🎉).

TypeScript handles ES6 transpilation a bit differently (at the end: cleaner) than babel so require syntax of the library slightly changes to:

const VM = require('ethereumjs-vm').default

The library now also comes with type declaration files distributed along with the package published.

Relevant PRs
  • Preparation, migration of Bloom, Stack and Memory, PR #495
  • StateManager migration, PR #496
  • Migration of precompiles, opcode list, EEI, Message, TxContext to TypeScript, PR [#497 (https://github.com//pull/497)
  • Migration of EVM (old: Interpreter) and exceptions, PR #504
  • Migration of Interpreter (old: Loop), PR #505
  • Migration of opFns (opcode implementations), PR #506
  • Migration of the main index.js VM class, PR #507
  • Migration of VM.runCode(), PR #508
  • Migration of VM.runCall(), PR #510
  • Migration of VM.runTx(), PR #511
  • Migration of VM.runBlock(), PR #512
  • Migration of VM.runBlockchain(), PR #517
  • TypeScript finalization PR, config switch, PR #518
  • Doc generation via TypeDoc, PR #522

EVM Modularization and Structural Refactoring

New Call and Code Loop Structure / EVM Encapsulation

This release switches to a new class based and promisified structure for working down VM calls and running through code loops, and encapsulates this logic to be bound to the specific EVM (so the classical Ethereum Virtual Machine) implementation in the evm module, opening the way for a future parallel eWASM additional implementation.

This new logic is mainly handled by the two new classes EVM (old: Interpreter) and Interpreter (old: Loop), see PR #483 for the initial work on this. The old VM.runCall() and VM.runCode() methods are just kept as being wrappers and will likely be deprecated on future releases once the inner API structure further stabilizes.

This new structure should make extending the VM by subclassing and adopting functionality much easier, e.g. by changing opcode functionality or adding custom onces by using an own Interpreter.getOpHandler() implementation. You are highly encouraged to play around, see what you can do and give us feedback on
possibilities and limitations.

EEI for Environment Communication

For interacting with the blockchain environment there has been introduced a dedicated EEI (Ethereum Environment Interface) module closely resembling the respective EEI spec, see PR #486 for the initial work.

This makes handling of environmental data by the VM a lot cleaner and transparent and should as well allow for much easier extension and modification.

Changes
  • Detached precompiles from the VM, PR #492
  • Subdivided runState, refactored Interpreter (old: Loop), PR #498
  • [BREAKING] Dropped emitFreeLogs flag, to replace it is suggested to implement by inheriting Interpreter (old: Loop), PR #498
  • Split EVM.executeMessage() with EVM.executeCall() and EVM.executeCreate() for call and create specific logic (old names: Interpreter.[METHOD_NAME]()), PR #499
  • Further simplification of Interpreter/EVM (old: Loop/Interpreter) structure, PR #506
  • [BREAKING] Dropped VM.runJit() in favor of direct handling in EVM (old: Interpreter), officially not part of the external API but mentioning just in case, PR #515
  • Removed StorageReader, moved logic to StateManager, #534

Istanbul Process Start

With this release we start the Istanbul hardfork integration process and have activated the istanbul hardfork option for the constructor.

This is meant to be used experimentation and reference implementations, we have made a start with integrating draft EIP-1108 Istanbul candidate support reducing the gas costs for alt_bn128 precompiles, see PR #539 for implementation details.

Note that this is still very early in the process since no EIP in a final state is actually accepted for being included into Istanbul on the time of release. The v4 release series will be kept as an experimental series
during the process with breaking changes introduced along the way without too much notice, so be careful and tighten the VM dependency if you want to give your users the chance for some early experimentation with some specific implementation state.

Once scope of Istanbul as well as associated EIPs are finalized a stable Istanbul VM version will be released as a subsequent major release.

Code Modernization and Version Updates

The main API with the v4 release switches from being callback based to using promises,
see PR #546.

Here is an example for changed API call runTx.

Old callback-style invocation:

vm.runTx(
  {
    tx: tx,
  },
  function(err, result) {
    if (err) {
      // Handle errors appropriately
    }
    // Do something with the result
  },
)

Promisified usage:

try {
  let result = await vm.runTx({ tx: tx })
  // Do something with the result
} catch (err) {
  // handle errors appropriately
}
Code Modernization Changes
  • Promisified internal usage of async opcode handlers, PR #491
  • Promisified runTx internals, PR #493
  • Promisified runBlock internals, restructure, reduced shared global state, PR #494
Version Updates
  • Updated ethereumjs-account from 2.x to 3.x, part of PR #496
Features
  • The VM now also supports a Common
    class instance for chain and HF setting, PRs #525 and #526
Bug Fixes
  • Fixed error message in runTx(), PR #523
  • Changed default hardfork in StateManager to petersburg, PR #524
  • Replaced Object.assign() calls and fixed type errors, PR #529

Development

  • Significant blockchain test speed improvements, PR #536
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