lighthouse/testing/ef_tests
Paul Hauner be4e261e74 Use async code when interacting with EL (#3244)
## Overview

This rather extensive PR achieves two primary goals:

1. Uses the finalized/justified checkpoints of fork choice (FC), rather than that of the head state.
2. Refactors fork choice, block production and block processing to `async` functions.

Additionally, it achieves:

- Concurrent forkchoice updates to the EL and cache pruning after a new head is selected.
- Concurrent "block packing" (attestations, etc) and execution payload retrieval during block production.
- Concurrent per-block-processing and execution payload verification during block processing.
- The `Arc`-ification of `SignedBeaconBlock` during block processing (it's never mutated, so why not?):
    - I had to do this to deal with sending blocks into spawned tasks.
    - Previously we were cloning the beacon block at least 2 times during each block processing, these clones are either removed or turned into cheaper `Arc` clones.
    - We were also `Box`-ing and un-`Box`-ing beacon blocks as they moved throughout the networking crate. This is not a big deal, but it's nice to avoid shifting things between the stack and heap.
    - Avoids cloning *all the blocks* in *every chain segment* during sync.
    - It also has the potential to clean up our code where we need to pass an *owned* block around so we can send it back in the case of an error (I didn't do much of this, my PR is already big enough 😅)
- The `BeaconChain::HeadSafetyStatus` struct was removed. It was an old relic from prior merge specs.

For motivation for this change, see https://github.com/sigp/lighthouse/pull/3244#issuecomment-1160963273

## Changes to `canonical_head` and `fork_choice`

Previously, the `BeaconChain` had two separate fields:

```
canonical_head: RwLock<Snapshot>,
fork_choice: RwLock<BeaconForkChoice>
```

Now, we have grouped these values under a single struct:

```
canonical_head: CanonicalHead {
  cached_head: RwLock<Arc<Snapshot>>,
  fork_choice: RwLock<BeaconForkChoice>
} 
```

Apart from ergonomics, the only *actual* change here is wrapping the canonical head snapshot in an `Arc`. This means that we no longer need to hold the `cached_head` (`canonical_head`, in old terms) lock when we want to pull some values from it. This was done to avoid deadlock risks by preventing functions from acquiring (and holding) the `cached_head` and `fork_choice` locks simultaneously.

## Breaking Changes

### The `state` (root) field in the `finalized_checkpoint` SSE event

Consider the scenario where epoch `n` is just finalized, but `start_slot(n)` is skipped. There are two state roots we might in the `finalized_checkpoint` SSE event:

1. The state root of the finalized block, which is `get_block(finalized_checkpoint.root).state_root`.
4. The state root at slot of `start_slot(n)`, which would be the state from (1), but "skipped forward" through any skip slots.

Previously, Lighthouse would choose (2). However, we can see that when [Teku generates that event](de2b2801c8/data/beaconrestapi/src/main/java/tech/pegasys/teku/beaconrestapi/handlers/v1/events/EventSubscriptionManager.java (L171-L182)) it uses [`getStateRootFromBlockRoot`](de2b2801c8/data/provider/src/main/java/tech/pegasys/teku/api/ChainDataProvider.java (L336-L341)) which uses (1).

I have switched Lighthouse from (2) to (1). I think it's a somewhat arbitrary choice between the two, where (1) is easier to compute and is consistent with Teku.

## Notes for Reviewers

I've renamed `BeaconChain::fork_choice` to `BeaconChain::recompute_head`. Doing this helped ensure I broke all previous uses of fork choice and I also find it more descriptive. It describes an action and can't be confused with trying to get a reference to the `ForkChoice` struct.

I've changed the ordering of SSE events when a block is received. It used to be `[block, finalized, head]` and now it's `[block, head, finalized]`. It was easier this way and I don't think we were making any promises about SSE event ordering so it's not "breaking".

I've made it so fork choice will run when it's first constructed. I did this because I wanted to have a cached version of the last call to `get_head`. Ensuring `get_head` has been run *at least once* means that the cached values doesn't need to wrapped in an `Option`. This was fairly simple, it just involved passing a `slot` to the constructor so it knows *when* it's being run. When loading a fork choice from the store and a slot clock isn't handy I've just used the `slot` that was saved in the `fork_choice_store`. That seems like it would be a faithful representation of the slot when we saved it.

I added the `genesis_time: u64` to the `BeaconChain`. It's small, constant and nice to have around.

Since we're using FC for the fin/just checkpoints, we no longer get the `0x00..00` roots at genesis. You can see I had to remove a work-around in `ef-tests` here: b56be3bc2. I can't find any reason why this would be an issue, if anything I think it'll be better since the genesis-alias has caught us out a few times (0x00..00 isn't actually a real root). Edit: I did find a case where the `network` expected the 0x00..00 alias and patched it here: 3f26ac3e2.

You'll notice a lot of changes in tests. Generally, tests should be functionally equivalent. Here are the things creating the most diff-noise in tests:
- Changing tests to be `tokio::async` tests.
- Adding `.await` to fork choice, block processing and block production functions.
- Refactor of the `canonical_head` "API" provided by the `BeaconChain`. E.g., `chain.canonical_head.cached_head()` instead of `chain.canonical_head.read()`.
- Wrapping `SignedBeaconBlock` in an `Arc`.
- In the `beacon_chain/tests/block_verification`, we can't use the `lazy_static` `CHAIN_SEGMENT` variable anymore since it's generated with an async function. We just generate it in each test, not so efficient but hopefully insignificant.

I had to disable `rayon` concurrent tests in the `fork_choice` tests. This is because the use of `rayon` and `block_on` was causing a panic.

Co-authored-by: Mac L <mjladson@pm.me>
2022-07-03 05:36:50 +00:00
..
src Use async code when interacting with EL (#3244) 2022-07-03 05:36:50 +00:00
tests Kiln mev boost (#3062) 2022-03-31 07:52:23 +00:00
.gitignore Update spec tests to v1.1.0-beta.4 (#2548) 2021-09-25 05:58:35 +00:00
Cargo.toml Update to Rust 1.59 and 2021 edition (#3038) 2022-02-25 00:10:17 +00:00
check_all_files_accessed.py Update to spec v1.1.8 (#2893) 2022-01-19 00:24:19 +00:00
Makefile Rename random to prev_randao (#3040) 2022-03-03 02:10:57 +00:00
README.md Update spec tests to v1.1.0-beta.4 (#2548) 2021-09-25 05:58:35 +00:00

Consensus Specification Tests

This crate parses and executes the test vectors at ethereum/consensus-spec-tests.

Functionality is achieved only via the $ cargo test --features ef_tests command.

Running the Tests

Because the test vectors are very large, we do not download or run them by default. To download them, run (in this directory):

$ make

Note: this may download hundreds of MB of compressed archives from the ethereum/consensus-spec-tests, which may expand into several GB of files.

If successful, you should now have the extracted tests in ./consensus-spec-tests.

Run them with:

$ cargo test --features ef_tests

The tests won't run without the ef_tests feature enabled (this is to ensure that a top-level cargo test --all won't fail on missing files).

Saving Space

When you download the tests, the downloaded archives will be kept in addition to the extracted files. You have several options for saving space:

  1. Delete the archives (make clean-archives), and keep the extracted files. Suitable for everyday use, just don't re-run make or it will redownload the archives.
  2. Delete the extracted files (make clean-test-files), and keep the archives. Suitable for CI, or temporarily saving space. If you re-run make it will extract the archives rather than redownloading them.
  3. Delete everything (make clean). Good for updating to a new version, or if you no longer wish to run the EF tests.