[LLVMdev] First-class debug info IR: MDLocation

[Duncan P. N. Exon Smith]

> On 2014-Oct-27, at 00:58, Chandler Carruth <chandlerc at google.com> wrote:
> 
> I haven't been able to follow all of the thread that got us here but your patch below has distilled the result enough for me to at least ask questions.

Always takes a patch to draw people in :).

> I'm sorry of some of the justification is buried in the thread and I'm just making you repeat it, but I suspect I'm not the only one that would benefit from the rationale being summarized here.
> 
> On Fri, Oct 24, 2014 at 4:16 PM, Duncan P. N. Exon Smith <dexonsmith at apple.com> wrote:
> Using `Value` instead of `MDNode`
> =================================
> 
> A number of APIs expect `MDNode` -- previously, the only referenceable
> type of metadata -- but this patch (and the ones that will follow) have
> referenceable metadata that *do not* inherit from `MDNode`.  Metadata
> APIs such as `Instruction::getMetadata()` and
> `NamedMDNode::getOperand()` need to return non-`MDNode` metadata.
> 
> To me, this change is a red flag

This bothers me too -- which is why I highlighted it -- but I don't
see any alternatives.  It seems like a natural fallout of the rest of
the proposal.

> and points out a bit of a lie in the subject line: this is not actually first-class debug-info IR. This is just making debug info become special metadata with special encoding properties.

How special does it have to be to be labeled "first-class"?

IMO, the label makes sense here:  custom C++ type, bitcode, assembly,
uniquing, and ownership.  Doesn't seem any less "special" than, say,
`AddInst`, but I don't really care what we call it.

Have I missed your point?  (Are you suggesting metadata is inherently
second-class?  How so?)

> Note, I'm actually ok with us having special metadata that has special encoding properties. But if we're going that route, I don't think that there is anything "debug info" centric about it, and it shouldn't be described as such.

The infrastructure won't be debug info centric, but the scope of the
project certainly is.

I'll be making "first-class" types for each type of debug info we use,
and changing their schema, ownership, and uniquing along the way.

I'm not going to touch any other metadata, although certainly if we
find that (e.g.) profile metadata has become a source of pain, we
could customize it in the future.

> I also think the relationship of MDUser, MDNode, and MDString need to be clarified a great deal. Why doesn't getMetadata return an 'MDUser*' for example?

In the class hierarchy:

  - Value -> MDString
  - Value -> MDNode
  - Value -> NamedMDNode
  - Value -> User -> MDUser -> ...

I named `MDUser` by its relationship with `User`, but maybe a better
name is `CustomMD`?  (Any suggestions?)

Here's a breakdown:

  - `MDString` is an arbitrary string that can be used as an operand.
    It's owned by an `LLVMContext` and treated like a constant.

  - `MDNode` is a generic node with arbitrary operands.  It can
    itself be used as an operand, and it can be attached to
    `Instruction`s.  Its operands don't "know" that it's using them.
    It's owned by an `LLVMContext` and treated like a constant.

  - `NamedMDNode` is a generic node with arbitrary operands.  It cannot
    be used as an operand, and its operands must all be `MDNode` (or
    `MDUser`/`CustomMD`).  It's owned by a `Module`.

  - `MDUser`/`CustomMD` is a parent class for specific types of
    metadata.  They can be used as operands and attached to
    `Instruction`s.  Their metadata operands "know" that they're being
    used, but they may have handles to non-metadata (which don't know).
    Their ownership is customized per subclass.

Also relevant (and kind of implied by the above): `Instruction` can
have arbitrary metadata attached to it, but it must be an `MDNode` (or
an `MDUser`/`CustomMD`).

> It feels as though you really want to sink the current functionality of MDNode down to some subclass of a more generic metadata IR type? Maybe I'm misunderstanding?

IMO, the overlap in functionality between `User` and `MDNode` precludes
having a (sane) inheritance relationship between `MDNode` and `MDUser`/
`CustomMD`.

Both `User` and `MDNode` implement support for an arbitrary number of
operands, but using completely incompatible mechanisms.

Since `MDNode` can reference an arbitrary number of arbitrary `Value`s,
it uses a subclass of `CallbackVH` called `MDNodeOperand` that costs
32B (x86-64).  Moreover, RAUW is expensive.

`MDUser`/`CustomMD` inherits from `User` so that its subclasses can
leverage the use-list infrastructure (8B per operand, fast RAUW).

> I also have to ask because I can't currently see it: what does debug info being metadata buy us? 

I suppose it buys us:

  - the guarantee that debug info doesn't modify optimizations or code
    generation, and

  - the flexibility for optimizations to ignore/drop it when they're
    not smart enough to update it.

> How much code is simplified by that, and at what cost?

I think that's hard to quantify.

I suppose the obvious alternative is to rewrite debug info from the
ground up, without using metadata at all.  I considered this, but
didn't find a compelling argument for it.  Main arguments against it:
it would be harder to implement incrementally, and it would increase
the amount of non-code IR.

Moreover, once we have specific subclasses and bitcode support for
debug info types, moving away from metadata (or even the `Value`
hierarchy entirely) would be an incremental step.

Do you have any specific alternatives mind?