Digital organisms made out of computer code that live in the browser
<Mick's blurb>
TODO Pointers to about.md, progress_so_far.md and debug/debug.md
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Python - The main script (
evolver.py) has been developed using Python 3.8. It definitely needs at least version 3.6 (which introduced f-strings; 3.6 or above is also required by thewasmtimemodule, which will be installed below). The script has not been tested with Python 3.6 or 3.7 (test reports welcome!). -
The Python virtual environment module (
venv) - Recommended but not essential (if not usingvenv, simply skip any lines that have "env" or "activate" in them). Thevenvmodule sometimes comes as a separate package under Linux (e.g.python3.8-venv). -
Git
The following has been tested on Linux (bash) and Windows 10 (git-bash):
git clone https://github.com/codelings-net/codelings
cd codelings
python -m venv .env
# Linux bash
ln -s .env/bin/activate .
# Win10 git-bash
ln -s .env/Scripts/activate .
source activate
python -m pip install --upgrade pip
pip install wasmtime hexdump(Reports from macOS and Windows PowerShell users would be welcome!)
The above should install the most recent version of the wasmtime WebAssembly
runtime. The project has been developed using wasmtime version 0.25.0 and
needs the fuel feature (which limits the number of instructions executed and
thereby avoids infinite loops). Fuel was introduced in version 0.23.0 released
in Feb 2021, so earlier versions will not work.
WABT (The WebAssembly Binary Toolkit, affectionately known as "wabbit") is not
required to run the main script (evolver.py), but it is useful when
experimenting with WebAssembly, e.g. for converting hand-written WebAssembly
text files to binary (using wat2wasm) or for disassembling the binary files
produced by the main script (via wasm-objdump -d).
TODO
cd codelings
source activate
# print out a detailed helper message
./evolver.py -h
# print out a list of available scoring functions and their descriptions
./evolver.py -fn list
# generate 10 new generation 0 codelings of default length and print out
# their scores
./evolver.py -gen0 10 run01
# generate 10 strings of random bytes of length 5, score them with
# scoring function 'v02', print out their scores and save those with
# score >= 0x00 to 'out'
./evolver.py -rnd0 10 -length 5 -fn v02 -thresh 0x00 run02The default input directory is called alive and is assumed to contain
codelings that are worth evolving further. The default output directory is
out.
Most of the command-line options (including -indir and -outdir) can also be
set in config.py.
The script catches SIGINT and handles it gracefully, so if you want to end a run that's in progress, feel free to press Ctrl-C at any point. The script will finish jobs that have already started and then exit (usually within a few seconds).
Codelings are built out of WebAssembly instructions, so a passing familiarity with the basics is probably a good idea if you want to understand what's going on.
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Gentle intro: https://blog.scottlogic.com/2018/04/26/webassembly-by-hand.html
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The spec (1.1 draft): https://webassembly.github.io/spec/core/
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The spec (1.0, W3C): https://www.w3.org/TR/wasm-core-1/
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Index of instructions (1.1 draft): https://webassembly.github.io/spec/core/appendix/index-instructions.html
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Index of instructions (1.0, W3C): https://www.w3.org/TR/wasm-core-1/#a7-index-of-instructions
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Main changes from 1.0 (aka the Minimum Viable Product or 'MVP') to 1.1: https://github.com/WebAssembly/spec/tree/master/proposals
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Browser support for new features: https://webassembly.org/roadmap/
This project currently produces version 1.0 of WebAssembly. The goal is for all code to be executable in all 3 major browsers (Chrome, Firefox and Safari) with default settings. As of March 2021, this means that we can probably start using the multi-value feature from the 1.1 draft spec (functions being able to return multiple values; very useful) as well as import/export of mutable globals (less useful?).
TODO
Wasmtime is a stand-alone WebAssembly runtime that allows WebAssembly programs to be run outside of the browser. This project uses the Python bindings.