This is a living document and at times it will be out of date. It is
intended to articulate how programming in the Go runtime differs from
writing normal Go. It focuses on pervasive concepts rather than
details of particular interfaces.

Scheduler structures
====================

The scheduler manages three types of resources that pervade the
runtime: Gs, Ms, and Ps. It's important to understand these even if
you're not working on the scheduler.

Gs, Ms, Ps
----------

A "G" is simply a goroutine. It's represented by type `g`. When a
goroutine exits, its `g` object is returned to a pool of free `g`s and
can later be reused for some other goroutine.

An "M" is an OS thread that can be executing user Go code, runtime
code, a system call, or be idle. It's represented by type `m`. There
can be any number of Ms at a time since any number of threads may be
blocked in system calls.

Finally, a "P" represents the resources required to execute user Go
code, such as scheduler and memory allocator state. It's represented
by type `p`. There are exactly `GOMAXPROCS` Ps. A P can be thought of
like a CPU in the OS scheduler and the contents of the `p` type like
per-CPU state. This is a good place to put state that needs to be
sharded for efficiency, but doesn't need to be per-thread or
per-goroutine.

The scheduler's job is to match up a G (the code to execute), an M
(where to execute it), and a P (the rights and resources to execute
it). When an M stops executing user Go code, for example by entering a
system call, it returns its P to the idle P pool. In order to resume
executing user Go code, for example on return from a system call, it
must acquire a P from the idle pool.

All `g`, `m`, and `p` objects are heap allocated, but are never freed,
so their memory remains type stable. As a result, the runtime can
avoid write barriers in the depths of the scheduler.

`getg()` and `getg().m.curg`
----------------------------

To get the current user `g`, use `getg().m.curg`.

`getg()` alone returns the current `g`, but when executing on the
system or signal stacks, this will return the current M's "g0" or
"gsignal", respectively. This is usually not what you want.

To determine if you're running on the user stack or the system stack,
use `getg() == getg().m.curg`.

Stacks
======

Every non-dead G has a *user stack* associated with it, which is what
user Go code executes on. User stacks start small (e.g., 2K) and grow
or shrink dynamically.

When a goroutine exits, its stack memory may be freed immediately or
retained for reuse by another goroutine. If the stack has the default
starting size, it is kept with the `g` object for reuse. If the stack
has grown beyond the starting size, it is freed and a new stack will
be allocated when the `g` is reused. Note that the `g` object itself
is never freed (as described above), but its associated stack memory
is managed separately and can be reclaimed.

Every M has a *system stack* associated with it (also known as the M's
"g0" stack because it's implemented as a stub G) and, on Unix
platforms, a *signal stack* (also known as the M's "gsignal" stack).
System and signal stacks cannot grow, but are large enough to execute
runtime and cgo code (8K in a pure Go binary; system-allocated in a
cgo binary).

Runtime code often temporarily switches to the system stack using
`systemstack`, `mcall`, or `asmcgocall` to perform tasks that must not
be preempted, that must not grow the user stack, or that switch user
goroutines. Code running on the system stack is implicitly
non-preemptible and the garbage collector does not scan system stacks.
While running on the system stack, the current user stack is not used
for execution.

nosplit functions
-----------------

Most functions start with a prologue that inspects the stack pointer
and the current G's stack bound and calls `morestack` if the stack
needs to grow.

Functions can be marked `//go:nosplit` (or `NOSPLIT` in assembly) to
indicate that they should not get this prologue. This has several
uses:

- Functions that must run on the user stack, but must not call into
  stack growth, for example because this would cause a deadlock, or
  because they have untyped words on the stack.

- Functions that must not be preempted on entry.

- Functions that may run without a valid G. For example, functions
  that run in early runtime start-up, or that may be entered from C
  code such as cgo callbacks or the signal handler.

Splittable functions ensure there's some amount of space on the stack
for nosplit functions to run in and the linker checks that any static
chain of nosplit function calls cannot exceed this bound.

Any function with a `//go:nosplit` annotation should explain why it is
nosplit in its documentation comment.

Error handling and reporting
============================

Errors that can reasonably be recovered from in user code should use
`panic` like usual. However, there are some situations where `panic`
will cause an immediate fatal error, such as when called on the system
stack or when called during `mallocgc`.

Most errors in the runtime are not recoverable. For these, use
`throw`, which dumps the traceback and immediately terminates the
process. In general, `throw` should be passed a string constant to
avoid allocating in perilous situations. By convention, additional
details are printed before `throw` using `print` or `println` and the
messages are prefixed with "runtime:".

For unrecoverable errors where user code is expected to be at fault for the
failure (such as racing map writes), use `fatal`.

For runtime error debugging, it may be useful to run with `GOTRACEBACK=system`
or `GOTRACEBACK=crash`. The output of `panic` and `fatal` is as described by
`GOTRACEBACK`. The output of `throw` always includes runtime frames, metadata
and all goroutines regardless of `GOTRACEBACK` (i.e., equivalent to
`GOTRACEBACK=system`). Whether `throw` crashes or not is still controlled by
`GOTRACEBACK`.

Synchronization
===============

The runtime has multiple synchronization mechanisms. They differ in
semantics and, in particular, in whether they interact with the
goroutine scheduler or the OS scheduler.

The simplest is `mutex`, which is manipulated using `lock` and
`unlock`. This should be used to protect shared structures for short
periods. Blocking on a `mutex` directly blocks the M, without
interacting with the Go scheduler. This means it is safe to use from
the lowest levels of the runtime, but also prevents any associated G
and P from being rescheduled. `rwmutex` is similar.

For one-shot notifications, use `note`, which provides `notesleep` and
`notewakeup`. Unlike traditional UNIX `sleep`/`wakeup`, `note`s are
race-free, so `notesleep` returns immediately if the `notewakeup` has
already happened. A `note` can be reset after use with `noteclear`,
which must not race with a sleep or wakeup. Like `mutex`, blocking on
a `note` blocks the M. However, there are different ways to sleep on a
`note`:`notesleep` also prevents rescheduling of any associated G and
P, while `notetsleepg` acts like a blocking system call that allows
the P to be reused to run another G. This is still less efficient than
blocking the G directly since it consumes an M.

To interact directly with the goroutine scheduler, use `gopark` and
`goready`. `gopark` parks the current goroutine—putting it in the
"waiting" state and removing it from the scheduler's run queue—and
schedules another goroutine on the current M/P. `goready` puts a
parked goroutine back in the "runnable" state and adds it to the run
queue.

In summary,

<table>
<tr><th></th><th colspan="3">Blocks</th></tr>
<tr><th>Interface</th><th>G</th><th>M</th><th>P</th></tr>
<tr><td>(rw)mutex</td><td>Y</td><td>Y</td><td>Y</td></tr>
<tr><td>note</td><td>Y</td><td>Y</td><td>Y/N</td></tr>
<tr><td>park</td><td>Y</td><td>N</td><td>N</td></tr>
</table>

Atomics
=======

The runtime uses its own atomics package at `internal/runtime/atomic`.
This corresponds to `sync/atomic`, but functions have different names
for historical reasons and there are a few additional functions needed
by the runtime.

In general, we think hard about the uses of atomics in the runtime and
try to avoid unnecessary atomic operations. If access to a variable is
sometimes protected by another synchronization mechanism, the
already-protected accesses generally don't need to be atomic. There
are several reasons for this:

1. Using non-atomic or atomic access where appropriate makes the code
   more self-documenting. Atomic access to a variable implies there's
   somewhere else that may concurrently access the variable.

2. Non-atomic access allows for automatic race detection. The runtime
   doesn't currently have a race detector, but it may in the future.
   Atomic access defeats the race detector, while non-atomic access
   allows the race detector to check your assumptions.

3. Non-atomic access may improve performance.

Of course, any non-atomic access to a shared variable should be
documented to explain how that access is protected.

Some common patterns that mix atomic and non-atomic access are:

* Read-mostly variables where updates are protected by a lock. Within
  the locked region, reads do not need to be atomic, but the write
  does. Outside the locked region, reads need to be atomic.

* Reads that only happen during STW, where no writes can happen during
  STW, do not need to be atomic.

That said, the advice from the Go memory model stands: "Don't be
[too] clever." The performance of the runtime matters, but its
robustness matters more.

Unmanaged memory
================

In general, the runtime tries to use regular heap allocation. However,
in some cases the runtime must allocate objects outside of the garbage
collected heap, in *unmanaged memory*. This is necessary if the
objects are part of the memory manager itself or if they must be
allocated in situations where the caller may not have a P.

There are three mechanisms for allocating unmanaged memory:

* sysAlloc obtains memory directly from the OS. This comes in whole
  multiples of the system page size, but it can be freed with sysFree.

* persistentalloc combines multiple smaller allocations into a single
  sysAlloc to avoid fragmentation. However, there is no way to free
  persistentalloced objects (hence the name).

* fixalloc is a SLAB-style allocator that allocates objects of a fixed
  size. fixalloced objects can be freed, but this memory can only be
  reused by the same fixalloc pool, so it can only be reused for
  objects of the same type.

In general, types that are allocated using any of these should be
marked as not in heap by embedding `internal/runtime/sys.NotInHeap`.

Objects that are allocated in unmanaged memory **must not** contain
heap pointers unless the following rules are also obeyed:

1. Any pointers from unmanaged memory to the heap must be garbage
   collection roots. More specifically, any pointer must either be
   accessible through a global variable or be added as an explicit
   garbage collection root in `runtime.markroot`.

2. If the memory is reused, the heap pointers must be zero-initialized
   before they become visible as GC roots. Otherwise, the GC may
   observe stale heap pointers. See "Zero-initialization versus
   zeroing".

Zero-initialization versus zeroing
==================================

There are two types of zeroing in the runtime, depending on whether
the memory is already initialized to a type-safe state.

If memory is not in a type-safe state, meaning it potentially contains
"garbage" because it was just allocated and it is being initialized
for first use, then it must be *zero-initialized* using
`memclrNoHeapPointers` or non-pointer writes. This does not perform
write barriers.

If memory is already in a type-safe state and is simply being set to
the zero value, this must be done using regular writes, `typedmemclr`,
or `memclrHasPointers`. This performs write barriers.

Linkname conventions
====================

```
//go:linkname localname [importpath.name]
//go:linknamestd localname [importpath.name]
```

`//go:linkname` specifies the symbol name (`importpath.name`) used to a
reference a local identifier (`localname`). The target symbol name is an
arbitrary ELF/macho/etc symbol name, but by convention we typically use a
package-prefixed symbol name to keep things organized.

`//go:linknamestd`, introduced in Go 1.27, is similar. The difference is that
`linknamestd` allows the symbol to be accessed within the standard library
only, whereas `linkname` permits external accesses. See "Linker check" below.
The linkname conventions discussed here apply to `linknamestd` as well.

The full generality of `//go:linkname` is very flexible, so as a convention to
simplify things, we define three standard forms of `//go:linkname` directives.

When possible, always prefer to use the linkname "handshake" described below.
If the linkname is needed only within the standard library, `linknamestd` is
preferred.

"Push linkname"
---------------

A "push" linkname gives a local _definition_ a final symbol name in a different
package. This effectively "pushes" the symbol to the other package.

```
//go:linkname foo otherpkg.foo
func foo() {
    // impl
}
```

The other package needs a _declaration_ to use the symbol from Go, or it can
directly reference the symbol in assembly. Typically this is an "export
linkname" declaration (below).

"Pull linkname"
---------------

A "pull" linkname gives references to a local _declaration_ a final symbol name
in a different package. This effectively "pulls" the symbol from the other
package.

```
//go:linkname foo otherpkg.foo
func foo()
```

The other package simply needs to define the symbol, but typically this is a
"export linkname" definition (below).

"Export linkname"
-----------------

The second argument to `//go:linkname` is the target symbol name. If it is
omitted, the toolchain uses the default symbol name. In other words, this is a
linkname to itself. This seems to be a no-op, but it is used to mean that this
symbol is "exported" for use with another linkname.

```
//go:linkname foo
func foo() {
    // impl
}
```

When applied to a definition, an export linkname indicates that another package
has a pull linkname targeting this symbol. This has a few effects:

- The compiler avoids generates ABI wrappers for ABI0 and/or ABIInternal, so a
  symbol defined in Go can be referenced from assembly in another package, or
  vice versa.
- The linker will allow pull linknames to this symbol even with
  `-checklinkname=true` (see "Handshake" section below).

```
//go:linkname foo
func foo()
```

When applied to a declaration, an export linkname indicates that another package
has a push linkname targeting this symbol. Other than documentation, the only
effect this has on the toolchain is that the compiler will not require a `.s`
file in the package (normally the compiler requires a `.s` file when there are
function declarations without a body).

Handshake
---------

We always prefer to use push linknames rather than pull linknames. With a push
linkname, the package with the definition is aware it is publishing an API to
another package. On the other hand, with a pull linkname, the definition
package may be completely unaware of the dependency and may unintentionally
break users.

The preferred form for a linkname is to use a push linkname in the defining
package, and a target linkname in the receiving package. The latter is not
strictly required, but serves as documentation. By convention, the receiving
package names the symbol containing the source package to further aid
documentation.

```
package runtime

//go:linkname foo otherpkg.runtime_foo
func foo() {
    // impl
}
```

```
package otherpkg

//go:linkname runtime_foo
func runtime_foo()
```

Linker check
------------

As of Go 1.23, the linker forbids pull linknames of symbols in the standard
library unless they participate in a handshake. Since many third-party packages
already have pull linknames to standard library functions, for backwards
compatibility, standard library symbols that are the target of external pull
linknames must use a target linkname to signal to the linker that pull
linknames are acceptable.

```
package runtime

//go:linkname fastrand
func fastrand() {
    // impl
}
```

Note that linker enforcement can be disabled with the `-checklinkname=false`
flag.

Variables
---------

All of the examples above use `//go:linkname` on functions. It is also possible
to use it on global variables as well, though this is much less common.

Variables don't have a clear distinction between definition and declaration. As
a rule, only one side should have a non-zero initial value. That side is the
"definition" and the other is the "declaration".

Both sides should have the same type, including size. Though if one side is
larger than another, the linker allocates space for the larger size.

Runtime-only compiler directives
================================

In addition to the "//go:" directives documented in "go doc compile",
the compiler supports additional directives only in the runtime.

go:systemstack
--------------

`go:systemstack` indicates that a function must run on the system
stack. This is checked dynamically by a special function prologue.

go:nowritebarrier
-----------------

`go:nowritebarrier` directs the compiler to emit an error if the
following function contains any write barriers. (It *does not*
suppress the generation of write barriers; it is simply an assertion.)

Usually you want `go:nowritebarrierrec`. `go:nowritebarrier` is
primarily useful in situations where it's "nice" not to have write
barriers, but not required for correctness.

go:nowritebarrierrec and go:yeswritebarrierrec
----------------------------------------------

`go:nowritebarrierrec` directs the compiler to emit an error if the
following function or any function it calls recursively, up to a
`go:yeswritebarrierrec`, contains a write barrier.

Logically, the compiler floods the call graph starting from each
`go:nowritebarrierrec` function and produces an error if it encounters
a function containing a write barrier. This flood stops at
`go:yeswritebarrierrec` functions.

`go:nowritebarrierrec` is used in the implementation of the write
barrier to prevent infinite loops.

Both directives are used in the scheduler. The write barrier requires
an active P (`getg().m.p != nil`) and scheduler code often runs
without an active P. In this case, `go:nowritebarrierrec` is used on
functions that release the P or may run without a P and
`go:yeswritebarrierrec` is used when code re-acquires an active P.
Since these are function-level annotations, code that releases or
acquires a P may need to be split across two functions.

go:uintptrkeepalive
-------------------

The //go:uintptrkeepalive directive must be followed by a function declaration.

It specifies that the function's uintptr arguments may be pointer values that
have been converted to uintptr and must be kept alive for the duration of the
call, even though from the types alone it would appear that the object is no
longer needed during the call.

This directive is similar to //go:uintptrescapes, but it does not force
arguments to escape. Since stack growth does not understand these arguments,
this directive must be used with //go:nosplit (in the marked function and all
transitive calls) to prevent stack growth.

The conversion from pointer to uintptr must appear in the argument list of any
call to this function. This directive is used for some low-level system call
implementations.

Execution tracer
================

The execution tracer is a way for users to see what their goroutines are doing,
but they're also useful for runtime hacking.

Using execution traces to debug runtime problems
------------------------------------------------

Execution traces contain a wealth of information about what the runtime is
doing. They contain all goroutine scheduling actions, data about time spent in
the scheduler (P running without a G), data about time spent in the garbage
collector, and more. Use `go tool trace` or [gotraceui](https://gotraceui.dev)
to inspect traces.

Traces are especially useful for debugging latency issues, and especially if you
can catch the problem in the act. Consider using the flight recorder to help
with this.

Turn on CPU profiling when you take a trace. This will put the CPU profiling
samples as timestamped events into the trace, allowing you to see execution with
greater detail. If you see CPU profiling sample events appear at a rate that does
not match the sample rate, consider that the OS or platform might be taking away
CPU time from the process, and that you might not be debugging a Go issue.

If you're really stuck on a problem, adding new instrumentation with the tracer
might help, especially if it's helpful to see events in relation to other
scheduling events. See the next section on modifying the execution tracer.
However, consider using `debuglog` for additional instrumentation first, as that
is far easier to get started with.

Notes on modifying the execution tracer
---------------------------------------

The execution tracer lives in the files whose names start with "trace."
The parser for the execution trace format lives in the `internal/trace` package.

If you plan on adding new trace events, consider starting with a [trace
experiment](../internal/trace/tracev2/EXPERIMENTS.md).

If you plan to add new trace instrumentation to the runtime, read the comment
at the top of [trace.go](./trace.go), especially the invariants.

debuglog
========

`debuglog` is a powerful runtime-only debugging tool. Think of it as an
ultra-low-overhead `println` that works just about anywhere in the runtime.
These properties are invaluable when debugging subtle problems in tricky parts
of the codebase. `println` can often perturb code enough to stop data races from
happening, while `debuglog` perturbs execution far less.

`debuglog` accumulates log messages in a ring buffer on each M, and dumps out
the contents, ordering it by timestamp, on certain kinds of crashes. Some messages
might be lost if the ring buffer gets full, in which case consider increasing the
size, or just work with a partial log.

1. Add `debuglog` instrumentation to the runtime. Don't forget to call `end`!
   Example: `dlog().s("hello world").u32(5).end()`
2. By default, `debuglog` only dumps its contents in certain kinds of crashes.
   Consider adding more calls to `printDebugLog` if you're not getting any output.
3. Build the program you wish to debug with the `debuglog` build tag.

`debuglog` is lower level than execution traces, and much easier to set up.