[LLVMdev] Using gcroot with value types

[Talin]

On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 12:16 PM, Paul Melis <llvm at assumetheposition.nl>wrote:

>  On 04/27/10 00:20, Talin wrote:
>
> On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 12:44 AM, Paul Melis <llvm at assumetheposition.nl>wrote:
>
>>  Hi,
>>
>> Talin wrote:
>> > I'm a little confused as to the rules for the arguments to llvm.gcroot,
>> > which says it must be a pointer alloca. I'm not sure whether that means
>> it
>> > must be an alloca (which is always a pointer by definition) or an alloca
>> > *of* a pointer.
>>
>> I'm pretty sure it should be "alloca of a pointer", as the first argument
>> of llvm.gcroot has type i8**.
>>
>> However, http://llvm.org/docs/GarbageCollection.html#gcroot, isn't
>> completely clear on this:
>>
>> "The first argument must be a value referring to an alloca instruction or
>> a bitcast of an alloca."
>>
>> This last sentence seems to rule out passing GEPs on alloca's to
>> llvm.gcroot.
>>
>> > What I am trying to figure out is how to declare roots contained in
>> value
>> > types. Suppose for example I have a small struct which contains several
>> > garbage-collectable references. This struct is a local variable, so it's
>> > contained in a block of memory which has been allocated via alloca. Now,
>> I
>> > don't want to add the struct itself as a root, since it isn't allocated
>> on
>> > the heap. But I want to declare the fields within the struct - which are
>> > GEPs from the alloca pointer - as roots, since they are references to
>> > objects on the heap.
>>
>> As reasonable as the above sounds, I don't think you can mark roots
>> contained in structs. But if I'm wrong I'd love to know ;-)  Perhaps you
>> can ask the LDC devs how/if they handle this case, as it seems you can
>> allocate a class instance on the stack in D.
>>
>>   Ugh. If all roots have to be singleton pointers, not embedded within a
> larger structure, then I'm not sure that what I want to do is even possible.
>
> In principle you could probably mark the alloca's of your value structs as
> gcroots. Then during collection you would have to make sure you recognize
> the value types so you don't move/deallocate/... them during a collection.
> That would still give you the option to trace all live objects by simply
> traversing the fields of a value struct. You would only have to do this for
> value structs (indirectly) containing references. Does that make sense?
>

Unfortunately, when I try to do this, the function verifier reports the
function as broken. It requires that the argument to llvm.gcroot be a
pointer to an alloca of a pointer. I can't fool it with casts.

>
> BTW, I checked the LDC sources, they don't use LLVM's GC support, but use
> their own GC stuff in D, so no clues there...
>
> Regards,
> Paul
>



-- 
-- Talin
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