make marshal output not dependent on reference count
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- Dominant language
- Python
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Description
Bug report
Currently the marshal module will emit a previously-unseen object flagged as a potential reference from later objects, unless the object has a reference count of 1. See https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/b27b57c6e44a276c8a9843fd37d4cf65b2827d5c/Python/marshal.c#L305
This is an overly-conservative heuristic -- it's easy to construct cases where an object has a reference count >1 but is not actually referenced by any other object about to be marshaled, so FLAG_REF is set when it does not need to be.
This makes marshal output unstable depending on accidents of reference counting behavior in the code calling marshal.dumps.
I ran into this because the Cinder JIT is able to reduce unnecessary increfs, and that resulted in some importlib tests failing on comparison of marshal output at https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/b27b57c6e44a276c8a9843fd37d4cf65b2827d5c/Lib/test/test_importlib/test_abc.py#L870-L871 because under Cinder JIT the reference count of code_object in that method is 1.
This previously caused issues in distutils reproducibility, resulting in a partial fix that applies only to interned strings: https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/8226
It would be better if marshal would actually determine which objects have multiple parents in the DAG and deterministically use FLAG_REF or not based on that.
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start with Python/marshal.c at the referenced reference-count heuristic and inspect the affected assertions in Lib/test/test_importlib/test_abc.py at lines 870-871. Trace how marshal.dumps decides FLAG_REF, then establish tests showing output is independent of caller reference counts and confirm the importlib tests pass.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- c, python
- Domain
- backend
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 5/5
- Estimated time
- Over a week
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 35/100