[LLVMdev] RTTI Madness

[Török Edwin]

On 01/29/2010 12:11 AM, Chris Lattner wrote:
> On Jan 28, 2010, at 12:45 PM, Thomas B. Jablin wrote:
>
>   
>> Hi,
>> Lately LLVM has been adding -fno-rtti to most of the compiler. I  
>> have a pass which uses LoopPass and which inherits from FunctionPass  
>> and a class of my own. If I compile my code with ENABLE_RTTI=1, I  
>> can't dynamically load the shared object since it won't be able to  
>> find the symbol for LoopPass's typeinfo.
>>
>> undefined symbol: _ZTIN4llvm8LoopPassE
>> $ c++filt _ZTIN4llvm8LoopPassE
>> typeinfo for llvm::LoopPass
>>
>> Alternatively, if I compile with ENABLE_RTTI=1 then the virtual  
>> table for my FunctionPass will be messed up. FunctionPass comes from  
>> Pass.cpp in ./lib/VMCore which is built with ENABLE_RTTI=1. The  
>> difference in the size of the virtual tables between LLVM's code,  
>> which is built with RTTI, and my code, which is built without causes  
>> the offsets into my derived class's virtual table to be wrong.
>>
>> What is the recommended course of action?
>>
>> I don't mind disabling RTTI globally, but I don't understand how  
>> RTTI and non-RTTI code can be correctly dynamically linked when  
>> there is multiple-inheritance. Unless someone else has a better  
>> idea, my preference would be compiling with ENABLE_RTTI=1 globally  
>> until the entire compiler is ready to go RTTI-free.
>>
>> Alternatively, if anyone knows a safe way to dynamically link RTTI  
>> and non-RTTI code, I'd appreciate their expertise.
>>     
>
> This was really irritating to me as well, when I was trying to to  
> eliminate RTTI.  The best advice I can give is that it is best to stop  
> using RTTI (and EH) in any of your code if possible.  If you want to  
> build LLVM with full rtti support, you can add a REQUIRES_RTTI=1  
> setting to the top level Makefile.config or on the make command line.
>   

On a related note, building googletest with gcc-4.4 doesn't require RTTI,
while building it with gcc-4.2 does require RTTI (due to tr1/functional
using typeid).
I'd be happy if there was a solution for that.

Best regards,
--Edwin