[cfe-dev] RFC: Support x86 interrupt and exception handlers

[H. Peter Anvin via cfe-dev]

On 09/22/15 04:44, David Chisnall wrote:
> On 22 Sep 2015, at 12:39, H.J. Lu via cfe-dev <cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>>
>> The center piece of my proposal is not to change how parameters
>> are passed in compiler.  As for user experience, the feedbacks on
>> my proposal from our users are very positive.
> 
> Implementing the intrinsics for getting the current interrupt
> requires a lot of support code for it to actually be useful.  For it
> to be useful, you are requiring all of the C code to be run with
> interrupts disabled (and even that doesn’t work if you get a NMI in
> the middle).  Most implementations use a small amount of assembly to
> capture the interrupt cause and the register state on entry to the
> handler, then reenable interrupts while the C code runs.  This means
> that any interrupts (e.g. page faults, illegal instruction traps,
> whatever) that happen while the C code is running do not mask the
> values.  Accessing these values from *existing* C code is simply a
> matter of loading a field from a structure.
> 
> I’m really unconvinced by something that something with such a narrow
> use case (and one that encourages writing bad code) belongs in the
> compiler.
> 

You seem to not understand how x86 works, nor have noted how this is
nearly universally supported by various architectures; x86 is the
exception here.

x86 stores its interrupt state on the stack, not in a register which can
be clobbered.  Also, a lot of your assertions about "most
implementations" only apply to full-scale operating systems.

	-hpa