[PATCH] Generate better location ranges for some register-described variables.

[David Blaikie]

On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 3:12 PM, Eric Christopher <echristo at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 3:03 PM, David Blaikie <dblaikie at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 3:00 PM, Alexey Samsonov <vonosmas at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 12:45 PM, Eric Christopher <echristo at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 10:26 AM, Adrian Prantl <aprantl at apple.com> wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> >> On May 29, 2014, at 10:03 PM, Alexey Samsonov <vonosmas at gmail.com>
>>>> >> wrote:
>>>> >>
>>>> >> Yeah, well, we can add "FrameTeardown" machine instruction flag in
>>>> >> addition to "FrameSetup", and annotate machine instructions added in frame
>>>> >> lowering code. But do we expect many users of this flag (assuming that this
>>>> >> usage is also somewhat questionable)?
>>>> >
>>>> > The FrameSetup flag is also only used by the debug info, so at least it
>>>> > wouldn’t be any more questionable than that :-)
>>>
>>>
>>> OK. Why don't we land the patch as-is now (don't terminate the register at
>>> the end of MBB if this register is only modified in frame setup and the last
>>> MBB - it should be safe), and then replace "the last MBB" condition with
>>> checking a "FrameTeardown" flag, attached to certain machine instructions?
>>> In this way we won't have to special-case certain registers and make
>>> assumptions about their constant-ness.
>>
>> Given the limited nature of this fix (both in the fix's possible scope
>> and intent/purpose) I'm personally sort of inclined to do this by
>> whitelisting certain registers instead, if that were/is possible...
>> seems simpler and still sufficient for the required purpose here.
>>
>> Can we easily just test whether a register is the stack/frame pointer?
>> (I actually know so little about this that the difference between
>> those two things isn't straight in my head and I'm not sure which, or
>> both, we need for the common/intended case here)
>>
>
> If we need to stack realign we might not be able to do this as easily.
> I'm not a huge fan of either method, but I think that the assumption
> that Alexey has might make more sense than whitelisting.

Fair enough.

> My logic:
> Whitelisting involves assuming that various registers won't be used in
> ways that surprise us and I can think of a few ways where it could
> happen: stack realignment, inline asm, a smarter stack coloring
> algorithm.

Can inline asm clobber the frame pointer & we actually tolerate that,
find the right variables, etc, when that happens? (how?)

Can't quite picture the stack coloring you have in mind & Alexey
commented on the stack realignment issue.

The only other idea I'd float would be another simpler solution,
though a bit more expressive: just a check to see that the particular
register(s) (stack/frame pointers, whichever things it is we actually
use to describe the location of stack variables) don't change beyond
the prologue, and if not, describe any variables that are relative to
that register as having that location for the whole program.

But, yeah, that's not /lots/ easier than finding any registers that
happen to meet that property.

- David

>
> -eric
>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> >
>>>>
>>>> :)
>>>>
>>>> >> I can also make this patch even less general and just special-case the
>>>> >> frame pointer and the stack pointer registers, so that the code wouldn't
>>>> >> pretend to solve a general problem we're facing.
>>>> >
>>>> > The frame pointer should be stable over the entire function, special
>>>> > casing it seems to be appropriate. I don’t know whether, e.g, stack coloring
>>>> > would cause the stack pointer to be modified in the middle of a function.
>>>> >
>>>>
>>>> FWIW it may not _now_ but there's nothing from stopping it either. :\
>>>>
>>>> -eric
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Alexey Samsonov
>>> vonosmas at gmail.com