Toolchain Metadata (SILK_VERSION, SILK_ABI_VERSION, SILK_GIT_COMMIT)

Silk exposes a small set of compiler-provided toolchain metadata values to:

• runtime Silk code (as built-in compile-time constants embedded into the output),
• and Formal Silk directives (#require, #assure, theories, etc).

These values let downstream code:

• report the exact toolchain used to build an artifact,
• gate behavior on the toolchain version,
• and express minimum-version requirements in Formal Silk.

Notes#

• the toolchain metadata constants listed below are available as built-in compile-time constants in every module.
• silk --version reports the same toolchain version, ABI version, and git commit.

Built-In Constants#

The compiler provides the following built-in constants in every module:

• SILK_VERSION: string

• SILK_VERSION_MAJOR: u64

• SILK_VERSION_MINOR: u64

• SILK_VERSION_PATCH: u64

• SILK_ABI_VERSION: string

• SILK_ABI_VERSION_MAJOR: u64

• SILK_ABI_VERSION_MINOR: u64

• SILK_ABI_VERSION_PATCH: u64

• SILK_GIT_COMMIT: string

These behave like normal const values:

• They do not require an import.
• They may be used anywhere an expression of the corresponding type is allowed.
• They are compile-time constants (their values are fixed at compile time and are embedded into the output artifact).

SILK_VERSION#

The Silk toolchain semantic version string for the compiler that is compiling the current module (SemVer core major.minor.patch).

SILK_VERSION_MAJOR / SILK_VERSION_MINOR / SILK_VERSION_PATCH#

The SemVer core triplet (major.minor.patch) of SILK_VERSION exposed as u64 values for convenient comparisons (especially in Formal Silk).

SILK_ABI_VERSION#

The semantic version string of the embedding ABI exposed by libsilk.a.

This must match:

• the SILK_ABI_VERSION_* macros in include/silk/silk.h, and
• the values reported by silk_abi_get_version(...).

SILK_ABI_VERSION_MAJOR / SILK_ABI_VERSION_MINOR / SILK_ABI_VERSION_PATCH#

The SemVer core components of SILK_ABI_VERSION exposed as u64 values.

SILK_GIT_COMMIT#

The git commit hash of the Silk toolchain used to compile the current module.

Rules:

• When the toolchain build can determine a git commit, this is set to a stable hash string.
• When the toolchain build cannot determine a commit (for example when building from a source snapshot without git metadata), this is set to "unknown".

Examples#

Printing toolchain information at runtime#

import { println } from "std/io";

fn main () -> int {
  println("silk={}, abi={}, commit={}", SILK_VERSION, SILK_ABI_VERSION, SILK_GIT_COMMIT);
  return 0;
}

Formal Silk: minimum toolchain requirement#

#require SILK_VERSION_MAJOR > 0 || (SILK_VERSION_MAJOR == 0 && SILK_VERSION_MINOR >= 2);

Related#

• CLI output: cli silk and silk.1 (silk --version)
• Conditional compilation: attributes (if attr(...) { ... })