[LLVMdev] MachineInstr: external symbols problem

[Vladimir Prus]

On Friday 15 April 2005 18:49, Chris Lattner wrote:
> On Fri, 15 Apr 2005, Vladimir Prus wrote:
> > Hello,
> > I just wrote the code like this:
> >
> > BuildMI(BB, NM::CALL, 1)
> >                    .addExternalSymbol(("_lvksda_control_marker_"
> >                                       +
> > lexical_cast<string>(bb)).c_str());
> >
> > and got some unexpected string in the assembler output. The problem is
> > that when external symbol is added to MachineInstruction, MachineOperand
> > is created with the char* argument, but the argument is not copied, it's
> > just stored in MachineOperand::symbolName. So, all long as string
> > temporary is destroyed, that pointer points to garbage. I suppose I
> > could handle this by adding function to LLVM module and using
> > .addGlobalValue, but still, is the non-copying behaviour of constructor
> > by design?
>
> Yes, this is by design.  MachineOperand is supposed to be a very
> light-weight union.  We actually used to have it carry an std::string
> around, but this required conditional code to make sure to free it and
> copy it when neccesary.

Yea, could be tricky with union.

> If you'd like to do this, there are a couple of options: first, you could
> build the table in the asmprinter, and have the operands point into the
> string table.  

Looks reasonable.

> Second, you could add the functions to the Module, though 
> that is less appealing (ideally the code generator would not hack on the
> LLVM module at all... we're not there yet, but slowly getting there).

Yea, I understand that. That's why I've asked.

> Another thing that might be interesting is the new llvm.pcmarker intrinsic
> that Andrew recently added.  I have no idea if it would be useful to you
> or not, but... it's documented here:
> http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/docs/LangRef.html#i_pcmarker

In fact, I'm having problems exactly while lowering the pcmarker intrinsic ;-)
Need to get in to assembler somehow, and I already have a code that parses 
assembler and recognised calls to functions with certain name patterns as 
markers.

- Volodya