[RFC] Text format serializer for PASM/PIR constants

[plobsing]

This would allow the freezing and thawing of arbitrary constants that can be held in PBC to and from PIR/PASM.

Attached is a proof of concept PMC to acheive the serialization/deserialization. Currently it only serializes, but it is based on the ImageIO API for object serialization/deserialization and mostly reuses existing tokens from PIR/PASM, so the deserializatoin shouldn't be terribly difficult.

New syntax would also have to be added to demarkate the beginings and ends of constant sections as well as to use constants in code sections. Perhaps '.begin_data(123)', '.end_data', and '$C123'.

I haven't put much work into what the punctuation should be and I'm not quite happy with it yet. I'd appreciate advice in this area especially.

[plobsing]

Serializer POC

[plobsing]

demonstration of serializer functionality

[plobsing]

output of demonstration

[plobsing]

In r46776, freezing PMCs was made more breadth-first. The update to PASMSerializer reflects this by holding PMC contents in one place.

[cotto]

plobsing, could you put this code into a branch on github? I'd like to see where we can go with this idea.

[plobsing]

Replying to cotto:

plobsing, could you put this code into a branch on github? I'd like to see where we can go with this idea.

This is now in the pasm-serializer branch.

I've made a few adjustments to the serializer pmc and converted the example into a test.

[jkeenan]

cotto, plobsing:

Are we going to pursue the approach taken in the pasm-serializer branch?

Thank you very much.

kid51