[llvm-dev] LLVM Pass - Backend Instrumentation

[Tim Northover via llvm-dev]

Hi Abdul,

On 28 February 2017 at 03:22, Abdul Wahab via llvm-dev
<llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> However, I don't know how
> to control the instrumentation address. Can anybody give me pointer on this?

A couple of options spring to mind.

You could allocate a buffer somewhere and store its address into a
chosen variable. Then your instrumentation would consist of loading
the buffer's address from this global into a vreg; storing your data
there; incrementing the buffer's address; and finally storing the
buffer back to the global.

Converting that whole sequence to a call might be better for
performance, and certainly more versatile. Then you'd put your data
into argument registers, emit a "BL __handle_store" or whatever, and
that function (which could be written in C++) would log the store.

A completely different approach would be to reserve some non-essential
register in LLVM (r9 is traditional) so the compiler doesn't use it.
Then if you arrange for startup code to set it to a buffer's address
you can simply store to r9 and increment it during your
instrumentation.

The tricky bit will be that this all has to be done after register
allocation (otherwise you miss spills & fills). You might have to
surround your entire instrumentation block with push/pop instructions
to give you some free registers to use.

Cheers.

Tim.