[LLVMdev] Redefining function

[Duncan Sands]

Hi Jeffrey,

>  2. It could compile C, and either replace B's machine code with a
> jump to C, or replace all calls to B with calls to C. Aside from not
> having the infrastructure to do this, it's not thread-safe:
> http://llvm.org/PR5184.

if all calls were via a handle (i.e. load the function pointer out of
some memory location then jump to it), then you could compile C,
atomically replace the pointer-to-B with the pointer-to-C in the memory
location, and later free B using some kind of user-space read-copy-update
type logic.  This could be managed transparently by the JIT (i.e. in the
IR you would have direct calls, that are implemented by a jump to a place
that loads the function pointer then calls it).  If you don't want to use
handles, then there are also various possibilities for thread-safe code
patching (eg: the linux kernel does this kind of thing in various places),
but this is of course more complicated.  That said, if the IR optimizers
have inlined your original function everywhere, then replacing the function
later won't have any effect...

Ciao,

Duncan.