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semantic-reasoning/wirelog

wirelog

Precise incremental Datalog engine in pure C11. Compiles Datalog programs into columnar execution plans and evaluates them using timely-differential dataflow evaluation.

Quick Start

A Datalog program that computes transitive closure:

.decl edge(a: symbol, b: symbol)
.decl path(a: symbol, b: symbol)

path(X, Y) :- edge(X, Y).
path(X, Z) :- path(X, Y), edge(Y, Z).

Run it from C using the wl_easy facade:

#include <wirelog/wirelog.h>  /* umbrella: pulls in wl_easy and the rest */

int main(void) {
    wl_easy_session_t *s = NULL;
    if (wl_easy_open(
            ".decl edge(a:symbol,b:symbol)\n"
            ".decl path(a:symbol,b:symbol)\n"
            "path(X,Y) :- edge(X,Y).\n"
            "path(X,Z) :- path(X,Y), edge(Y,Z).\n", &s) != WIRELOG_OK)
        return 1;

    wl_easy_set_delta_cb(s, wl_easy_print_delta, s);
    wl_easy_insert_sym(s, "edge", "a", "b", NULL);
    wl_easy_insert_sym(s, "edge", "b", "c", NULL);
    wl_easy_step(s);   /* prints: + path("a","b"), + path("b","c"), + path("a","c") */
    wl_easy_close(s);
    return 0;
}

Build and run:

git clone https://github.com/semantic-reasoning/wirelog.git
cd wirelog
meson setup build && meson compile -C build
meson test -C build

For fine-grained control over plans, backends, or worker counts, use the wl_session_* primitives in wirelog/session.h.

Features

  • Incremental evaluation -- timely-differential dataflow evaluation propagates only new facts, not full re-derivation
  • Columnar backend -- nanoarrow (minimal Apache Arrow C implementation) memory layout for cache-efficient execution
  • SIMD acceleration -- AVX2 (x86-64) and ARM NEON (ARM64) for hash, filter, and join operations
  • Optimizer pipeline -- Logic Fusion, Join-Project Planning, Semijoin Information Passing, Magic Sets
  • Memory backpressure -- thread-safe ledger with JOIN budget enforcement and graceful truncation
  • Pure C11 -- no runtime, no GC; strict AddressSanitizer + UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer validation

Performance

15-workload benchmark portfolio (2026-05-06, main at 8240f97, release/LTO build, GCC 16.1.1, repeat=1):

Test environment: Intel Xeon E5-2696 v4 (22C/44T), Linux 6.19.14 (Arch), 44 logical CPUs, single NUMA node. Measurements were collected from ./build/bench/bench_flowlog; wall-clock results vary with CPU governor, thermal state, and memory pressure.

Category Workload W=1 median W=8 median Tuples Iterations Peak RSS (W=1 / W=8)
Graph TC (Transitive Closure) 7.3ms 7.1ms 4,950 98 2.8MB / 3.0MB
Graph Reach 0.8ms 0.7ms 100 98 2.6MB / 2.6MB
Graph CC (Connected Components) 0.7ms 0.7ms 100 0 2.7MB / 2.6MB
Graph SSSP (Shortest Path) 0.6ms 0.5ms 1 0 2.6MB / 2.6MB
Graph SG (Subgraph) 0.6ms 0.6ms 0 0 2.6MB / 2.6MB
Graph Bipartite 1.0ms 1.0ms 100 73 2.6MB / 2.6MB
Pointer Analysis Andersen 2.1ms 2.7ms 155 8 4.5MB / 3.0MB
Pointer Analysis Dyck-2 15.1ms 9.4ms 2,120 8 5.5MB / 6.3MB
Pointer Analysis CSPA 1.55s 0.58s 20,381 6 314MB / 409MB
Data Flow CSDA 2.9ms 2.9ms 2,986 29 3.1MB / 3.0MB
Ontology Galen 32.8ms 27.9ms 5,568 23 6.1MB / 15.5MB
Borrow Check Polonius 4.6ms 4.6ms 1,807 23 5.0MB / 5.0MB
Disassembly DDISASM 3.8ms 4.3ms 531 0 4.9MB / 4.9MB
CRDT CRDT 19.25s 19.23s 1,301,914 0 / 7,603 73MB / 175MB
Program Analysis DOOP (zxing) 73.42s 59.05s 6,276,657 28 11.8GB / 12.0GB

Incremental evaluation (CSPA, delta-seeded): W=1 baseline 1.55s -> incremental re-eval 30.7ms (50.4x faster); W=8 baseline 648.2ms -> incremental re-eval 26.3ms (24.6x faster). Each run inserted one fact and changed the result from 20,381 to 21,063 tuples.

--workers N means "use up to N workers", not "force exactly N workers for every stratum". The evaluator selects an active width per eligible TDD or K-Fusion path, falls back to narrower execution when a plan is not safely partitionable, and caps some paths to avoid spending memory on idle worker state. This keeps W=N adaptive: increasing N gives the runtime permission to use more parallelism where it is semantically safe and profitable, while single-threaded or narrow strata remain valid.

Re-run the large-workload snapshot with:

meson setup build --buildtype=release
meson compile -C build bench/bench_flowlog
for w in 1 8; do
  ./build/bench/bench_flowlog --workload tc --data bench/data/graph_100.csv --workers "$w" --repeat 1
  ./build/bench/bench_flowlog --workload reach --data bench/data/graph_100.csv --workers "$w" --repeat 1
  ./build/bench/bench_flowlog --workload cc --data bench/data/graph_100.csv --workers "$w" --repeat 1
  ./build/bench/bench_flowlog --workload sssp --data bench/data/graph_100.csv --data-weighted bench/data/graph_100_weighted.csv --workers "$w" --repeat 1
  ./build/bench/bench_flowlog --workload sg --data bench/data/graph_100.csv --workers "$w" --repeat 1
  ./build/bench/bench_flowlog --workload bipartite --data bench/data/graph_100.csv --workers "$w" --repeat 1
  ./build/bench/bench_flowlog --workload andersen --data-andersen bench/data/andersen --workers "$w" --repeat 1
  ./build/bench/bench_flowlog --workload dyck --data-dyck bench/data/dyck --workers "$w" --repeat 1
  ./build/bench/bench_flowlog --workload cspa-fast --data-cspa bench/data/cspa --workers "$w" --repeat 1
  ./build/bench/bench_flowlog --workload cspa --data-cspa bench/data/cspa --workers "$w" --repeat 1
  ./build/bench/bench_flowlog --workload csda --data-csda bench/data/csda --workers "$w" --repeat 1
  ./build/bench/bench_flowlog --workload galen --data-galen bench/data/galen --workers "$w" --repeat 1
  ./build/bench/bench_flowlog --workload polonius --data-polonius bench/data/polonius --workers "$w" --repeat 1
  ./build/bench/bench_flowlog --workload ddisasm --data-ddisasm bench/data/ddisasm --workers "$w" --repeat 1
  ./build/bench/bench_flowlog --workload crdt --data-crdt bench/data/crdt --workers "$w" --repeat 1
  ./build/bench/bench_flowlog --workload doop --data-doop bench/data/doop --workers "$w" --repeat 1
done

Examples

Directory Topic
01-simple Ancestor computation (facts + recursive rules)
02-graph-reachability Flight route reachability
03-bitwise-operations Bitwise permission analysis
04-hash-functions Hash-based deduplication
05-crc32-checksum CRC32 checksum validation
06-timestamp-lww Last-write-wins timestamp resolution
07-multi-source-analysis Set operations across data sources
08-delta-queries Delta callbacks with wl_easy
09-retraction-basics Fact retraction with -1 deltas
10-recursive-under-update Transitive closure under insert/remove
11-time-evolution Per-epoch delta isolation
12-snapshot-vs-delta Snapshot vs streaming API comparison
13-daemon-style Long-running daemon rotation pattern

Build & Test

meson setup build
meson compile -C build
meson test -C build --print-errorlogs    # 126 tests

# Sanitizer build (optional)
meson setup build-san -Db_sanitize=address,undefined
meson test -C build-san --print-errorlogs

Platforms: Linux (GCC/Clang), macOS (Clang), Windows (MSVC).

Logging (WL_LOG)

Runtime, section-filtered, level-gated diagnostics — GStreamer GST_DEBUG style. Zero overhead when disabled: release builds strip disabled levels at compile time (&& short-circuit over a compile-time constant guard); runtime-disabled sites are a single cacheline byte load plus a predicted-not-taken branch.

Syntax

WL_LOG = entry ( ',' entry )*
entry  = name ':' level
name   = ident | '*'
level  = 0..5        # NONE=0  ERROR=1  WARN=2  INFO=3  DEBUG=4  TRACE=5

Whitespace is tolerated. The wildcard * sets all sections; subsequent entries override per-section (last-wins). Unknown section names are silently skipped. Malformed tokens zero the output and emit a one-time wirelog: malformed WL_LOG spec: <value> on stderr.

Sections (closed enum in v1; extensions are a recompile): GENERAL, JOIN, CONSOLIDATION, ARRANGEMENT, EVAL, SESSION, IO, PARSER, PLUGIN.

Examples

WL_LOG=JOIN:4 ./build/wirelog_cli run file.wl        # DEBUG on JOIN only
WL_LOG=CONSOLIDATION:3 ./build/bench/bench_flowlog   # INFO+ on CONSOLIDATION
WL_LOG=*:2,JOIN:5 ./build/wirelog_cli                # WARN+ everywhere, TRACE on JOIN
WL_LOG_FILE=/tmp/wl.log WL_LOG=JOIN:5 ./build/wirelog_cli

Output shape: [LEVEL][SECTION] file:line: <message>. Timestamps and thread IDs are deferred to a follow-up. If WL_LOG_FILE fopen fails, the logger falls back to stderr with a one-time notice.

Release builds

Pass -Dwirelog_log_max_level=error to strip all levels above ERROR at compile time — disabled sites contribute zero .text bytes and do not evaluate their arguments. Meson emits a warning if you request --buildtype=release without lowering the ceiling.

meson setup build-release --buildtype=release -Dwirelog_log_max_level=error
meson compile -C build-release

meson test -C build --suite abi includes a compile-erasure check that rebuilds libwirelog with the ceiling at error and asserts TRACE-level sentinel strings are absent from .rodata.

Performance gate

A release-mode microbenchmark lives under meson test --suite perf. Requires a performance CPU governor and the trace ceiling so the runtime guard is exercised; skips with Meson code 77 otherwise rather than silently passing on noisy hardware.

meson setup build-release --buildtype=release -Dwirelog_log_max_level=trace
meson compile -C build-release
taskset -c 0 meson test -C build-release --suite perf

Fail criteria: wall-clock delta > 1% OR per-iteration delta > 1 ns against a no-log baseline (100M iters, 1M warmup, 5 trials, median).

Safety caveats

  • WL_LOG is not async-signal-safe. Do not call from signal handlers.
  • After fork() in a child that changes the sink, call wl_log_init() again. No pthread_atfork handler is installed.
  • Threshold writes happen only at init; reads are lock-free byte loads on a cacheline-aligned, padded table. Single-writer / many-reader at runtime is safe without TSan noise.

Migrating from WL_DEBUG_JOIN / WL_CONSOLIDATION_LOG (#277)

The legacy presence-check flags continue to work: any value (including 0, matching their original semantics) seeds the matching section to TRACE at init. WL_LOG overrides the shim, including explicit silence via WL_LOG=JOIN:0.

Legacy invocation Canonical replacement
WL_DEBUG_JOIN=1 ./app WL_LOG=JOIN:5 ./app
WL_CONSOLIDATION_LOG=1 ./app WL_LOG=CONSOLIDATION:5 ./app

A separate issue will retire the legacy env vars after an external-consumer audit.

Documentation

License

Wirelog is dual-licensed to serve both open-source and enterprise needs.

LGPL-3.0 (default): Use wirelog as a library in your application -- open-source or proprietary -- without disclosing your own source code. Modifications to wirelog itself must be shared under LGPL-3.0. See LICENSE.md for full terms.

Commercial license: For use cases that require no LGPL obligations -- closed-source OEM embedding, proprietary extensions, or custom feature development -- a commercial license is available.

LGPL-3.0 Commercial
Use in proprietary apps Yes (as a library) Yes
Modify wirelog Must share modifications No obligation
OEM / embedded redistribution Must allow relinking Unrestricted
Priority support Community only Included

Contact: [email protected]

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Embedded-to-Enterprise Datalog Engine in C11

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