[llvm-dev] DWARF Generator

[David Blaikie via llvm-dev]

On Thu, Nov 17, 2016 at 5:00 PM Greg Clayton <gclayton at apple.com> wrote:

>
> > On Nov 17, 2016, at 3:40 PM, David Blaikie <dblaikie at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Nov 17, 2016 at 3:12 PM Greg Clayton via llvm-dev <
> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> > I have recently been modifying the DWARF parser and have more patches
> planned and I want to be able to add unit tests that test the internal llvm
> DWARF APIs to ensure they continue to work and also validate the changes
> that I am making. There are not many DWARF unit tests other than very
> simple ones that test DWARF forms currently. I would like to expand this to
> include many more tests.
> >
> > I had submitted a patch that I aborted as it was too large. One of the
> issues with the patch was a stand alone DWARF generator that can turn a few
> API calls into the section data required for the DWARFContextInMemory class
> to be able to load DWARF from. The idea is to generate a small blurb of
> DWARF, parse it using our built in DWARF parser and validate that the API
> calls we do when consuming the DWARF match what we expect. The original
> stand along DWARF generator class is in
> unittests/DebugInfo/DWARF/DWARFGenerator2.{h,cpp} in the patch attached.
> The original review suggested that I try to use the AsmPrinter and many of
> its associated classes to generate the DWARF. I attempted to do so and the
> AsmPrinter version is in lib/CodeGen/DwarfGenerator.{h,cpp} in the patch
> attached. This AsmPrinter based code steals code from the DwarfLinker.cpp.
> >
> >
> >
> > I am having trouble getting things to work with the AsmPrinter. I was
> able to get simple DWARF to be emitted with the AsmPrinter version of the
> DWARF generator with code like:
> >
> >
> >    initLLVM();
> >    DwarfGen DG;
> >    Triple Triple("x86_64--");
> >    StringRef Path("/tmp/test.elf");
> >    bool DwarfInitSuccess = DG.init(Triple, Path);
> >    EXPECT_TRUE(DwarfInitSuccess);
> >    uint16_t Version = 4;
> >    uint8_t AddrSize = 8;
> >    DwarfGenCU &CU = DG.appendCompileUnit(Version, AddrSize);
> >    DwarfGenDIE CUDie = CU.getUnitDIE();
> >
> >    CUDie.addAttribute(DW_AT_name, DW_FORM_strp, "/tmp/main.c");
> >    CUDie.addAttribute(DW_AT_language, DW_FORM_data2, DW_LANG_C);
> >
> >    DwarfGenDIE SubprogramDie = CUDie.addChild(DW_TAG_subprogram);
> >    SubprogramDie.addAttribute(DW_AT_name, DW_FORM_strp, "main");
> >    SubprogramDie.addAttribute(DW_AT_low_pc, DW_FORM_addr, 0x1000U);
> >    SubprogramDie.addAttribute(DW_AT_high_pc, DW_FORM_addr, 0x2000U);
> >
> >    DwarfGenDIE IntDie = CUDie.addChild(DW_TAG_base_type);
> >    IntDie.addAttribute(DW_AT_name, DW_FORM_strp, "int");
> >    IntDie.addAttribute(DW_AT_encoding, DW_FORM_data1, DW_ATE_signed);
> >    IntDie.addAttribute(DW_AT_byte_size, DW_FORM_data1, 4);
> >
> >    DwarfGenDIE ArgcDie = SubprogramDie.addChild(DW_TAG_formal_parameter);
> >    ArgcDie.addAttribute(DW_AT_name, DW_FORM_strp, "argc");
> >    //ArgcDie.addAttribute(DW_AT_type, DW_FORM_ref_addr, IntDie); //
> Crashes here...
> >
> >    DG.generate();
> >
> >    auto Obj = object::ObjectFile::createObjectFile(Path);
> >    if (Obj) {
> >      DWARFContextInMemory DwarfContext(*Obj.get().getBinary());
> >      uint32_t NumCUs = DwarfContext.getNumCompileUnits();
> >      for (uint32_t i=0; i<NumCUs; ++i) {
> >        DWARFCompileUnit *U = DwarfContext.getCompileUnitAtIndex(i);
> >        if (U)
> >          U->getUnitDIE(false)->dump(llvm::outs(), U, -1u);
> >      }
> >    }
> >
> >
> > But things fall down if I try to uncomment the DW_FORM_ref_addr line
> above. The problem is that AsmPrinter really expects a full stack of stuff
> to be there and expects people to use the DwarfDebug class and all of its
> associated classes. These associated classes really want to use the "DI"
> objects (DICompileUnit, etc) so to create a compile unit we would need to
> create DICompileUnit object and then make a AsmPrinter/DwarfCompileUnit.
> That stack is pretty heavy and requires the code shown above to create many
> many classes just to represent the simple output we wish to emit. Another
> downside of the AsmPrinter method is we don't know which targets people are
> going to build into their binaries and thus we don't know which triples we
> will be able to use when generating DWARF info. Adrian Prantl attempted to
> help me get things working over here and we kept running into roadblocks.
> >
> > It'd be great to have more detail about the roadblocks you hit to better
> understand how bad/what the issues are.
>
> A few blocks:
>
> - DIEString doesn't support DW_FORM_string. DW_FORM_string support might
> have been pulled so that we never emit it from clang, but we would want to
> have a unit test that covers being able to read an inlined C string from a
> DIE. Support won't be that hard to add, but we might not want it so that
> people can't use it by accident and make less efficient DWARF.
>

The codepaths for generating strings in DWARF in LLVM are pretty
streamlined (see DwarfUnit::addString) - it's not likely the presence of
support for DW_FORM_string will suddenly cause anyone to mistakenly create
such an attribute because they all go through that API because it's
convenient to do so & handles all the cases.

If we ever wanted to support DW_FORM_string (perhaps for users who care a
lot more about size than the performance characteristics you're concerned
with (I don't know if GDB does the same optimizations - so perhaps we're
paying the size for little/no benefit there, for example)) we would do it
in that one place, quite deliberately/explicitly.


> - Asserts, asserts, asserts. As we tried to emit DWARF, we got an asserts
> in bool AsmPrinter::doInitialization(Module &M). On the first line:
>
>   MMI = getAnalysisIfAvailable<MachineModuleInfo>();
>
> This asserts if you use the AsmPrinter the way the DwarfLinker and the
> AsmPrinter based DwarfGen does if you call this. You must call this to
> generate the DebugDwarf. If you get past this by installing a Pass then we
> assert at:
>
>   GCModuleInfo *MI = getAnalysisIfAvailable<GCModuleInfo>();
>   assert(MI && "AsmPrinter didn't require GCModuleInfo?");
>
> If we don't have this, we don't get a DwarfDebug.
>

Right - my general thinking is: DwarfLinker uses these APIs somehow so I
expect you could use them similarly. If there are differences in your use
case that make DwarfLinker's usage not applicable to yours, it'd be good to
understand that. If it's just that DwarfLinker's putting up with pain you'd
rather not - well, seems like it'd be good to fix/ease that pain for both
users.


> > Even if we end up adding another set of code to generate DWARF (which
> I'd really like to avoid) we'd want to, at some point, coalesce them back
> together. Given the goal is to try to coalesce the DWARF parsing code in
> LLDB and LLVM, it'd seem unfortunate if that effort just created another
> similar (or larger) amount of work for DWARF generation.
>
> This DWARF generator could just live in the unittests/DebugInfo/DWARF
> directory so it wouldn't pollute anything in LLVM it we do choose to use it.
>

It's not so much about pollution - much like the DWARF parser in LLDB and
LLVM didn't pollute each other - it's still two systems that end up growing
their own features, bugs, fixes, etc, which is best avoided.


> > I wanted to pass this patch along in case someone wants to take a look
> at how we can possibly fix the lib/CodeGen/DwarfGenerator.cpp and
> lib/CodeGen/DwarfGenerator.h. The code that sets up all the required
> classes for the AsmPrinter method is in the DwarfGen class from
> lib/CodeGen/DwarfGenerator.cpp in the following function:
> >
> > bool DwarfGen::init(Triple TheTriple, StringRef OutputFilename);
> >
> > The code in this function was looted from existing DwarfLinker.cpp code.
> This functions requires a valid triple and that triple is used to create a
> lot of the classes required to make the AsmPrinter. I am not sure if any
> other code uses the AsmPrinter like this besides the DwarfLinker.cpp code
> and that code uses its own magic to actually link the DWARF. It does reuse
> some of the functions as I did, but the DwarfLinker doesn't use any of the
> DwarfDebug, DwarfCompileUnit or any of the classes that the
> compiler/assembler uses when making DWARF.
> >
> > What's the DwarfLinker code missing that you need? If that code is
> generating essentially arbitrary DWARF, what's blocking using the same
> technique for generating DWARF for parsing tests?
>
> They don't use any of the DwarfDebug, DwarfCompileUnit classes. They also
> don't use any of the DI classes when making up the debug info. So both the
> DWARF linker and the generator have similar needs: make DWARF that isn't
> tied too closely to the clang internal classes and DI classes.
>

Right - I don't think either of these use cases should use the DI classes.
So how is the DwarfLinker working to generate DWARF in ways that don't work
for your needs?


> > The amount of work required for refactoring the AsmPrinter exceeds the
> time I am going to have, but I would still like to have DWARF API testing
> in the unit tests.
> >
> > So my question is if anyone would have objections to using the stand
> along DWARF generator in unittests/DebugInfo/DWARF until we can later get
> the YAML tools to be able to produce DWARF and we can switch to testing the
> DWARF data that way? Chris Bieneman has expressed interest in getting a
> DWARF/YAML layer going.
> >
> > Those tools would still want to use pretty similar (conceptually)
> abstractions to LLVM's codegen and llvm-dsymutil. I'd still strongly prefer
> to generalize/keep common APIs here - or better understand why it's not
> practical now (& what it will take/how we make sure we have a plan and
> resources to get there eventually).
> >
> > My reasoning is:
> > - I want to be able to test DWARF APIs we have to ensure they work
> correctly as there are no Dwarf API tests right now. I will be adding code
> that changes many things in the DWARF parser and it will be essential to
> verify that there are no regressions in the DWARF APIs.
> > - Not sure which targets would be built into LLVM so it might be hard to
> write tests that cover 32/64 bit addresses and all the variants if we have
> to do things legally via AsmPrinter and valid targets
> >
> > Seems like it might be plausible to refactor out whatever features of
> the AsmPrinter these APIs require (so we just harvest that data out of
> AsmPrinter and pass it down in a struct, say - so that other users can pass
> their own struct without needing an AsmPrinter). Though, again, interested
> to know how dsymutil is working in these situations.
>
> I can try that method if indeed the only places that use the DwarfDebug
> are the DW_FORM_ref_addr and location lists. I'll let you know how that
> goes.
> >
> > - Not enough time to modify AsmPrinter to not require the full DebugInfo
> stack and the classes that it uses (llvm::DwarfCompileUnit which must use
> llvm::DICompileUnit, llvm::DIE class which uses many local classes that all
> depend on  the full DwarfDebug stack).
> >
> > Will you have time at some later date to come back and revisit this?
> It's understandable that we may choose to incur short term technical debt
> with an understanding that it will be paid off in some timely manner. It'd
> be less desirable if there's no such plan/possibility and we incur a fairly
> clear case of technical debt (redundant DWARF generation libraries -
> especially when this effort is to remove a redundant DWARF parser).
>
> Not sure anyone else will need to generate DWARF manually.


I think all 3 cases (unit tests, dsymutil, llvm codegen) all generate DWARF
about as 'manually' as each other & would likely benefit from using the
same APIs/commonality as much as possible.


> The two clients currently are the DWARF unittests and the DwarfLinker. The
> DwarfLinker worked around these issues. If the AsmPrinter wasn't such an
> integral part of the entire compiler stack, I could take a stab at
> refactoring it, but I don't believe I am the right person to do this at
> this point as I have no experience or knowledge of the various ways that
> this class is used, or how it interacts with other support classes
> (DwarfDebug, and many many other classes).
>

Right - I'd generally just suggest doing whatever DwarfLinker's doing, as a
baseline - if that situation can be improved (in small or large ways)
that'd be cool too. But I don't think creating a second DWARF generation
library is exactly forward progress.


> Things that still worry me:
> - not being able to generate DWARF for 32/64 if targets are missing
>

How's DwarfLinker deal with this? Or does it punt on it?

In any case, again, hopefully things can be extracted/refactored a bit to
simplify this.


> - DIEString not supporting DW_FORM_string. I can add support, but I don't
> know if we want it as if we add it people might start using it.
>

I think it'll be fine - we only generate them in one place, if we ever
support DW_FORM_string it'll be a very explicit choice/explicit code to do
so.


> - hacking around asserts by constructing classes and copying code from
> places that properly use the AsmPrinter that way it is supposed to be used
> so that we can use it in a way that it wasn't designed to be used.
>

Right - refactoring is probably required (or at least cribbing whatever
techniques DwarfLinker's already using to do the same thing), which is how
these things tend to go.


>
> >
> > I made a large effort to try and get things working with the AsmPrinter,
> so I wanted everyone to know that I tried to get that solution working. Let
> me know what you anyone thinks.
> >
> > Greg Clayton
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > LLVM Developers mailing list
> > llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org
> > http://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev
>
>
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