[cfe-dev] [Exception Handling] Could we mark __cxa_end_catch as nounwind conditionally?
Harald van Dijk via cfe-dev
cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org
Tue Aug 31 01:09:08 PDT 2021
On 30/08/2021 20:43, John McCall via cfe-dev wrote:
>
> On 30 Aug 2021, at 2:59, Fāng-ruì Sòng wrote:
>
> On 2021-08-30, chuanqi.xcq wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> Let me introduce about the background:
> I find that the compiler couldn't mark `foo` as `nounwind` in
> the following example:
>
> ```
> void bar();
> void foo() {
> try {
> bar();
> } catch(...) {}
> }
> ```
>
> From my perspective, it is clear that foo wouldn't throw any
> exception. So it is natural to me that the compiler could mark
> foo as nounwind as an optimization. But it didn't.
> This pattern occurs frequently in C++20 coroutine. So I tried
> to handle coroutine specially before in:
> https://reviews.llvm.org/D108277.
> But the all the reviewers strongly suggested that we should
> handle this case generally for all of functions instead of
> coroutines only.
>
> Then when I looked into the details in IR, I found the reason
> is that __cxa_end_catch isn't nounwind.
> Here is the IR generated:
>
> ```
> ; Function Attrs: mustprogress uwtable
> define dso_local void @_Z3foov() local_unnamed_addr #0
> personality i8* bitcast (i32 (...)* @__gxx_personality_v0 to
> i8*) {
> invoke void @_Z3barv()
> to label %5 unwind label %1
>
> 1: ; preds = %0
> %2 = landingpad { i8*, i32 }
> catch i8* null
> %3 = extractvalue { i8*, i32 } %2, 0
> %4 = tail call i8* @__cxa_begin_catch(i8* %3) #2 ; nounwind
> tail call void @__cxa_end_catch()
> br label %5
>
> 5: ; preds = %0, %1
> ret void
> }
> ```
>
> I found that if I marked the call to __cxa_end_catch() as
> `nounwind`, the foo could be marked as `nounwind`. So I start
> to survey why __cxa_end_catch() isn't 'nounwind'.
> First is the comment on __cxa_end_catch() in libcxxabi:
>
> ```
> Upon exit for any reason, a handler must call:
> void __cxa_end_catch ();
>
> This routine can be called for either a native or foreign
> exception.
> For a native exception:
> * Locates the most recently caught exception and decrements
> its handler count.
> * Removes the exception from the caught exception stack, if
> the handler count goes to zero.
> * If the handler count goes down to zero, and the exception
> was not re-thrown
> by throw, it locates the primary exception (which may be the
> same as the one
> it's handling) and decrements its reference count. If that
> reference count
> goes to zero, the function destroys the exception. In any
> case, if the current
> exception is a dependent exception, it destroys that.
>
> For a foreign exception:
> * If it has been rethrown, there is nothing to do.
> * Otherwise delete the exception and pop the catch stack to empty.
> ```
>
> I am not familiar with exception handling. But from the
> comment above, it looks like that __cxa_end_catch wouldn't throw.
> Then in clang::ItaniumCXXABI, I found this:
>
> ```
> A cleanup to call __cxa_end_catch. In many cases, the caught
> exception type lets us state definitively that the thrown
> exception
> type does not have a destructor. In particular:
> - Catch-alls tell us nothing, so we have to conservatively
> assume that the thrown exception might have a destructor.
> - Catches by reference behave according to their base types.
> - Catches of non-record types will only trigger for exceptions
> of non-record types, which never have destructors.
> - Catches of record types can trigger for arbitrary subclasses
> of the caught type, so we have to assume the actual thrown
> exception type might have a throwing destructor, even if the
> caught type's destructor is trivial or nothrow.
> ```
>
> It looks like that __cxa_end_catch would throw only if the
> exception caught has an destructor which may throw.
>
> Yes...
>
> But I think the situation is rare. First as the comment says,
> an exception type doesn't have a destructor usually.
> Then if it has a destructor, it is also rare that it may
> throw. Finally, it is a bad practice to throw from destructor
> which occurs in catch block.
> So I want to provide an option to tell the compiler whether
> the exceptions in current project has a may-throw destructor.
> In this way, we could optimize the example in the beginning.
>
> From GCC produced .gcc_except_table, it seems that GCC unconditionally
> assumes that __cxa_begin_catch/__cxa_end_catch do not throw. GCC does
> not emit call site records for the region with __cxa_end_catch.
>
> So I think we should unconditionally assume that
> __cxa_begin_catch/__cxa_end_catch don't throw as well.
> Sent https://reviews.llvm.org/D108905
>
> That is not how this works. Here’s the path we need to take.
>
> First, as I mentioned in the review, we need to figure out what the
> language standard expects to happen when the destructor for an
> exception throws at the end of a |catch|. Currently we are essentially
> treating this as undefined behavior, which I think is highly unlikely
> to be the intent of the standard.
>
> If it’s allowed to unwind, then |__cxa_end_catch| can throw, and so
> the second step is to:
> (1) fix the bugs in the language runtimes to handle this situation
> correctly and not leak the exception object, and then
> (2) fix GCC to stop unconditionally assuming that |__cxa_end_catch|
> does not throw.
> We could then add an opt-in flag to globally assume that exception
> destructors never throw as an optimization if that’s really important
> for getting good code.
>
FWIW, although I cannot read the GCC exception table to check what that
contains, when looking at what happens at runtime GCC appears to handle
this correctly (except possibly for a memory leak, no comment on that).
Here is a full example which returns 0 when compiled with GCC,
regardless of optimisation level:
void bar();
void foo() {
try {
bar();
} catch (...) {}
}
struct S {
~S() noexcept(false) { throw 0; }
};
void bar() {
throw S();
}
int main() {
try {
foo();
} catch (int) {
return 0;
}
return 1;
}
clang is in agreement with GCC, except that this appears to expose a
problem in libc++(abi): with libstdc++, behaviour is as with GCC, with
libc++ it results in
libc++abi: terminating with unexpected exception of type int
Aborted (core dumped)
If it is decided that this program is valid, I'll report the libc++(abi)
problem to the bug tracker and possibly see if I can figure out what's
going on.
Intel disagrees and causes
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'int'
Aborted (core dumped)
even when not optimising, even though it is using libstdc++.
> If it’s supposed to call |std::terminate|, then we need to come to an
> agreement with the language runtimes about whose responsibility it is
> to ensure that the exception is caught and |std::terminate| is called.
> That means opening an issue with the Itanium C++ ABI. If we decide
> it’s the compiler’s responsibility to pass a noexcept function as the
> exception destructor, then we need to fix Clang to wrap the destructor
> in a noexcept function when it’s not noexcept. If we decide it’s the
> runtime’s responsibility, we need to fix the runtimes to catch this
> exception and call |std::terminate|. In either of those casess,
> |__cxa_end_catch| is known not to throw. We could also decide it’s the
> compiler’s responsibility to call |std::terminate| if
> |__cxa_end_catch| throws, and if so then we have to do that; however,
> I think that would be a bad outcome.
>
> John.
>
>
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