Implement t8ntool to use for execution-spec-tests / VM Block Builder Adjustments

[jochem-brouwer]

Resolves #3602

This PR implements T8NTool, used for execution-spec-tests to fill (and in the future: write) tests. To see how it works, check the t8ntool readme in vm/test/t8n/README.md.

[acolytec3]

Suggested change

	tsx "$SCRIPT_DIR/launchT8N.ts" "$@"
	npx tsx "$SCRIPT_DIR/launchT8N.ts" "$@"

This way it will run even if I only have tsx installed locally within ethjs and not globally.

[acolytec3]

LGTM. Was able to get the fill process to run.

[jochem-brouwer]

Thanks a lot all, this was a huge process, but super happy to get this merged now 😄

Together with ethereum/execution-spec-tests#752 we are now ready "out-of-the-box" to fill tests 😄 🚀

[holgerd77]

🎉🎉🎉

[jochem-brouwer]

Hi @holgerd77, the slow stuff of t8n has not much to do with using MCL. It is simply the load time of all our libraries. It is done each time t8n is called, which can be done multiple times per test (in fact, for each block t8n is called).

I have on the agenda a separate PR to open up a server daemon which will then remove this "cold load" time and instead "hot load" the VM. This will drastically speed up the runtime of this tool (for multiple tests).

You could think of this when running the Blockchain tests, except now you dont run it with the default settings but instead you run npm run test:blockchain -- --test=TEST. This is essentially what is happening right now with t8n, which is obviously very slow.

Note that for BLS tests MCL is indeed somewhat faster (we have seen in the Blockchain tests a decrease from ~7 seconds to something like ~6 seconds). However that is for all tests, this ~1 second change is already what would be saved if we would "hot load" the libraries.

I plan to add this server daemon asap!

[holgerd77]

Hi @holgerd77, the slow stuff of t8n has not much to do with using MCL. It is simply the load time of all our libraries. It is done each time t8n is called, which can be done multiple times per test (in fact, for each block t8n is called).

I have on the agenda a separate PR to open up a server daemon which will then remove this "cold load" time and instead "hot load" the VM. This will drastically speed up the runtime of this tool (for multiple tests).

You could think of this when running the Blockchain tests, except now you dont run it with the default settings but instead you run npm run test:blockchain -- --test=TEST. This is essentially what is happening right now with t8n, which is obviously very slow.

Note that for BLS tests MCL is indeed somewhat faster (we have seen in the Blockchain tests a decrease from ~7 seconds to something like ~6 seconds). However that is for all tests, this ~1 second change is already what would be saved if we would "hot load" the libraries.

I plan to add this server daemon asap!

Ah ok, makes a lot of sense, thanks for the insight! 🤯

Also thanks for planning ahead on this already! 🙏