[llvm-dev] Writing a test for gcov style coverage crashing after dlclose

[Benoit Belley via llvm-dev]

Hi Everyone,

I have uploaded a patch that allows one to successfully gather gcov/gcda
coverage information on programs which unload shared libraries. It¹s a
simple fix, just adding a few COMPILER_RT_VISIBILITY (i.e.
__attribute__((visibility("hidden")))) in GCDAProfiling.c.

Now, I¹d like to include a test program to demonstrate the fix. AFAICT,
there seems to be a single test for
"-fprofile­arcs/-ftest-coverage/-femit-coverage-data", namely:
tools/clang/test/CodeGen/code-coverage.c. (To be fair, there are some
tests related to the testing of the command line options themselves.)
There seems to be no tests that actually execute the instrumented
executables to gather coverage data.

- Is that a fair assessment of the current situation ?
- Should I create a new test directory such as
llvm/projects/compiler-rt/test/gcov (or gcda) to put my test case ?

Guidance would be appreciated.
Benoit

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See: https://llvm.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=27224


Bug 27224 <https://llvm.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=27224> - gcov /
gcda-based profiling crashes when shared libraries are unloaded (dlclose())


I believe that GCDA profiling functions should be declared as hidden, i.e.
symbols that are not exported by shared libraries. This would allow the
GCDA based profiling to work correctly with code using dlopen/dlclose to
load and unload shared libraries.

Each shared library must have its own copy of the following GCDA functions:

     - __gcov_flush
     - llvm_delete_flush_function_list
     - llvm_delete_writeout_function_list
     - llvm_gcda_emit_arcs
     - llvm_gcda_emit_function
     - llvm_gcda_end_file
     - llvm_gcda_increment_indirect_counter
     - llvm_gcda_start_file
     - llvm_gcda_summary_info
     - llvm_gcov_init
     - llvm_register_flush_function
     - llvm_register_writeout_function
     - llvm_writeout_files

Defining these function as "hidden" prevents a shared library from
exporting them in its interface. The end-result is that each profiled
shared library will be guaranteed to get its own set of the GCDA functions
extracted from libclang_rt.profile.a.

These GCDA functions are referencing the static writeout_fn and flush_fn
lists. These lists are traversed when a shared library is unloaded or the
program exits through an atexit() function. It is important that each
shared library gets its own set of these lists so that the proper .gcda
files are updated when a library is unloaded.

Furthermore, if a shared library doesn't get its own set of GCDA
functions and associated lists, it will leave dangling pointers to its own
"writeout" and "flush" functions in the static writeout_fn and flush_fn
lists of another shared library. These dangling pointers lead to crashes
when the other shared library is unloaded or when the program exits.



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Benoit Belley
Sr Principal Developer
M&E-Product Development Group
Autodesk, Inc.
10 Duke Street
Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3C 2L7
www.autodesk.com <http://www.autodesk.com/>