[cfe-dev] Semantic checks and template instantiations

[Dario Domizioli]

Thanks for the suggestion, David.
It's a step in the right direction, but it still doesn't quite work for me.
The checks in Sema::AddAlignedAttr are performed when the alignment
attribute is applied to a declaration, but not when a declared variable is
implicitly aligned because it has an aligned type. My goal is to detect
aligned variables.
For instance, consider the following code:

struct A { int x; };
struct __attribute__(( aligned (64) )) B { int y; };
template <typename T> struct __attribute__(( aligned (64) )) C { int z;
void foo (T t) {} };
A a;
A al_a __attribute__(( aligned (64) ));
B b;
C<long> c;

If the checks are performed in Sema::AddAlignedAttr, they will flag the
definition of "struct B" and the template "struct C", plus the explicitly
aligned variable "al_a", but they will not flag the definition of either
variable "b" or "c".
So it's performing the check for templates too, which is great, but only
when the type is defined, not when a variable is defined.

For the check I actually want to perform, things are even more complex as I
need to flag "over-aligned" variables only in some cases (I need to check
some other properties of the variable). In my use case having an
"over-aligned" type is allowed provided that no "problematic" variables are
defined using it.
So I need the check to be performed on the variable, not on the attribute
(which is why I was doing the check in Sema::ActOnVariableDeclarator).

Cheers,
    Dario Domizioli
    SN Systems - Sony Computer Entertainment Group






On 4 January 2014 21:20, David Majnemer <david.majnemer at gmail.com> wrote:

> We perform similar alignment checks in 'Sema::AddAlignedAttr' like
> ensuring that the number is a power-of-two and less than 8192.
> If I understand you correctly, you would want to add your checks there.
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 3, 2014 at 9:58 AM, Dario Domizioli <dario.domizioli at gmail.com
> > wrote:
>
>> Hello again, cfe-dev.
>>
>> I'm back from holidays and I'm looking at this again.
>> I'm also having trouble performing the checks at CodeGen time since there
>> are many places where variables are emitted; but still it feels wrong to
>> perform checks during CodeGen.
>>
>> Any ideas where it would be best to perform alignment checks?
>> Thanks,
>>     Dario Domizioli
>>     SN Systems - Sony Computer Entertainment Group
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 18 December 2013 12:05, Dario Domizioli <dario.domizioli at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> Hello cfe-dev.
>>>
>>> I am trying to perform additional checks on the alignment of C++
>>> variables (outputting diagnostic messages if the checks trigger), and the
>>> place where it feels more natural to do so is in
>>> Sema::ActOnVariableDeclarator. There is already a check for under-alignment
>>> there (a call to Sema::CheckAlignasUnderalignment) so I thought I was on
>>> the right track.
>>> However I am finding that my checks don't trigger when the variable
>>> being declared/defined is a template instantiation.
>>>
>>> Suppose for the sake of example that I wanted to add a check that warns
>>> if the alignment exceeds a certain number of CharUnits, say 32. If I put
>>> the check in ActOnVariableDeclarator right after the under-alignment check,
>>> it does catch this case:
>>>
>>> struct __attribute__(( aligned(64) )) my_aligned { int x; }
>>> // ...
>>> my_aligned my_variable; // Diagnostic here
>>>
>>> However it does not catch this case:
>>>
>>> template <typename T> class __attribute__(( aligned(64) ))
>>> my_aligned_template {
>>>     int x;
>>>     void foo (T param) { /* some code */ }
>>> }
>>> // ...
>>> my_aligned_template<float> my_variable; // No diagnostic here, but the
>>> IR has the right alignment (64)
>>>
>>> I am using ASTContext::getDeclAlign to get the alignment of the variable
>>> in the declaration, as the documentation says that it returns a
>>> conservative alignment for the variable, and it's actually the same
>>> function used at CodeGen time to determine the alignment.
>>> However I seem to understand that at that point (when
>>> ActOnVariableDeclarator runs) the template instantiation hasn't been
>>> processed yet and therefore the type of the variable is still a dependent
>>> type (despite the fact that the layout of my_aligned_template does not in
>>> fact depend on T, but I accept that in the general case it can do). This
>>> means that the alignment is unknown at that stage and I can't really check
>>> it.
>>> In fact, I have noticed that Sema::CheckAlignasUnderalignment (which is
>>> my reference for implementing the checks) also skips dependent and
>>> incomplete types.
>>>
>>> Of course when ASTContext::getDeclAlign is used later on in CodeGen
>>> everything is known about variables and their types, so I could move my
>>> checks there, but it would feel wrong to do the checks while IR is being
>>> generated, I think Sema should be the right place to perform semantic
>>> checks.
>>>
>>> Can anyone point me in the right direction? Is there a more sensible
>>> place than ActOnVariableDeclarator where I can put my additional alignment
>>> checks?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>     Dario Domizioli
>>>     SN Systems - Sony Computer Entertainment Group
>>>
>>
>>
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>
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