[llvm-dev] Weak symbol/alias semantics

Fri Jan 13 16:53:21 PST 2017

Thanks, David and Peter. Some responses to Peter's email below. Teresa

On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 3:21 PM, Peter Collingbourne <peter at pcc.me.uk>
wrote:

> Hi Teresa,
>
> I think that to answer your question correctly it is helpful to consider
> what is going on at the object file level. For your test1.c we conceptually
> have a .text section containing the body of f, and then three symbols:
>
> .weak f
> f = .text
> .globl strongalias
> strongalias = .text
> .weak weakalias
> weakalias = .text
>
> Note that f, strongalias and weakalias are not related at all, except that
> they happen to point to the same place. If f is overridden by a symbol in
> another object file, it does not affect the symbols strongalias and
> weakalias, so we still need to make them point to .text. I don't think it
> would be right to make strongalias and weakalias into copies of f, as that
> would be observable through function pointer equality. Most likely all you
> need to do is to internalize f and keep strongalias and weakalias as
> aliases of f.
>

Good point on wanting function pointer equality.  However, we can't simply
internalize f(). We'll also need to rename the internalized copy. The
reason is that we want the original f() references to resolve to the
prevailing copy in the other module.Summarizing what we just talked about
on IRC, when we have a non-prevailing weak/linkonce symbol f() that has an
alias point to it, we need to:
1) Rename and internalize f()
2) Create a new external decl f()
3) RAUW existing references (other than from the aliases) with the new
local created in 1)

I think if it is however a weak_odr/linkonce_odr we can simplify the
process since all copies will be the same. We can make f()
available_externally (to enable inlining), and simply convert references to
aliases of f() into direct references to f() and drop the aliases - does
that sound right?

 Another tricky thing is if the weak symbol was a variable that is
initialized via a __cxx_global_var_init function in the global_ctors list.
If we have an alias to that symbol, presumably we'll want the new
internalized/renamed version to get initialized instead?

Now in the case where we have an alias that is itself a weak non-prevailing
symbol, how we handle will I think depend on what it is aliased to:
a) aliased to a weak/linkonce non-prevailing symbol -> handle as described
earlier
b) aliased to a weak_odr/linkonce_odr non-prevailing symbol -> handle as
described earlier
c) aliased to a strong symbol or a prevailing symbol -> convert to external
decl (I think this case is only possible if the alias is a non-odr
weak/linkonce)

Does that sound right?

> If we're resolving strongalias to f at -O2, that seems like a bug to me.
> We can probably only resolve an alias to the symbol it references if we are
> guaranteed that both symbols will have the same resolution, i.e. we must
> check at least that both symbols have strong or internal linkage. If we
> cared about symbol interposition, we might also want to check that both
> symbols have non-default visibility, but I think that our support for that
> is still a little fuzzy at the moment.
>

Per your and David's analysis it sounds like this is a bug then - I can
file a bug to track it with the example.

Regarding the comdat case I mentioned - Peter and I discussed on IRC and he
pointed out that my case was illegal since aliases are by definition in the
same comdat group as the symbol they alias. So in effect I had an
incomplete comdat group.

Thanks,
Teresa

> Thanks,
> Peter
>
> On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 2:33 PM, Teresa Johnson <tejohnson at google.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi Mehdi, Peter and David (and anyone else who sees this),
>>
>> I've been playing with some examples to handle the weak symbol cases we
>> discussed in IRC earlier this week in the context of D28523. I was going to
>> implement the support for turning aliases into copies in order to enable
>> performing thinLTOResolveWeakForLinkerGUID on both aliases and aliasees,
>> as a first step to being able to drop non-prevailing weak symbols in
>> ThinLTO backends.
>>
>> I was wondering though what happens if we have an alias, which may or may
>> not be weak itself, to a non-odr weak symbol that isn't prevailing. In that
>> case, do we eventually want references via the alias to go to the
>> prevailing copy (in another module), or to the original copy in the alias's
>> module? I looked at some examples without ThinLTO, and am a little
>> confused. Current (non-ThinLTO) behavior in some cases seems to depend on
>> opt level.
>>
>> Example:
>>
>> $ cat weak12main.c
>> extern void test2();
>> int main() {
>>   test2();
>> }
>>
>> $ cat weak1.c
>> #include <stdio.h>
>>
>> void weakalias() __attribute__((weak, alias ("f")));
>> void strongalias() __attribute__((alias ("f")));
>>
>> void f () __attribute__ ((weak));
>> void f()
>> {
>>   printf("In weak1.c:f\n");
>> }
>> void test1() {
>>   printf("Call f() from weak1.c:\n");
>>   f();
>>   printf("Call weakalias() from weak1.c:\n");
>>   weakalias();
>>   printf("Call strongalias() from weak1.c:\n");
>>   strongalias();
>> }
>>
>> $ cat weak2.c
>> #include <stdio.h>
>>
>> void f () __attribute__ ((weak));
>> void f()
>> {
>>   printf("In weak2.c:f\n");
>> }
>> extern void test1();
>> void test2()
>> {
>>   test1();
>>   printf("Call f() from weak2.c\n");
>>   f();
>> }
>>
>> If I link weak1.c before weak2.c, nothing is surprising (we always invoke
>> weak1.c:f at both -O0 and -O2):
>>
>> $ clang weak12main.c weak1.c weak2.c -O0
>> $ a.out
>> Call f() from weak1.c:
>> In weak1.c:f
>> Call weakalias() from weak1.c:
>> In weak1.c:f
>> Call strongalias() from weak1.c:
>> In weak1.c:f
>> Call f() from weak2.c
>> In weak1.c:f
>>
>> $ clang weak12main.c weak1.c weak2.c -O2
>> $ a.out
>> Call f() from weak1.c:
>> In weak1.c:f
>> Call weakalias() from weak1.c:
>> In weak1.c:f
>> Call strongalias() from weak1.c:
>> In weak1.c:f
>> Call f() from weak2.c
>> In weak1.c:f
>>
>> If I instead link weak2.c first, so it's copy of f() is prevailing, I
>> still get weak1.c:f for the call via weakalias() (both opt levels), and for
>> strongalias() when building at -O0. At -O2 the compiler replaces the call
>> to strongalias() with a call to f(), so it get's the weak2 copy in that
>> case.
>>
>> $ clang weak12main.c weak2.c weak1.c -O2
>> $ a.out
>> Call f() from weak1.c:
>> In weak2.c:f
>> Call weakalias() from weak1.c:
>> In weak1.c:f
>> Call strongalias() from weak1.c:
>> In weak2.c:f
>> Call f() from weak2.c
>> In weak2.c:f
>>
>> $ clang weak12main.c weak2.c weak1.c -O0
>> $ a.out
>> Call f() from weak1.c:
>> In weak2.c:f
>> Call weakalias() from weak1.c:
>> In weak1.c:f
>> Call strongalias() from weak1.c:
>> In weak1.c:f
>> Call f() from weak2.c
>> In weak2.c:f
>>
>> I'm wondering what the expected/correct behavior is? Depending on what is
>> correct, we need to handle this differently in ThinLTO mode. Let's say
>> weak1.c's copy of f() is not prevailing and I am going to drop it (it needs
>> to be removed completely, not turned into available_externally to ensure it
>> isn't inlined since weak isInterposable). If we want the aliases in weak1.c
>> to reference the original version, then copying is correct (e.g. weakalias
>> and strong alias would each become a copy of weak1.c's f()). If we however
>> want them to resolve to the prevailing copy of f(), then we need to turn
>> the aliases into declarations (external linkage in the case of strongalias
>> and external weak in the case of weakalias?).
>>
>> I also tried the case where f() was in a comdat, because I also need to
>> handle that case in ThinLTO (when f() is not prevailing, drop it from the
>> comdat and remove the comdat from that module). Interestingly, in this case
>> when weak2.c is prevailing, I get the following warning when linking and
>> get a seg fault at runtime:
>>
>> weak1.o:weak1.o:function test1: warning: relocation refers to discarded
>> section
>>
>> Presumably the aliases still refer to the copy in weak1.c, which is in
>> the comdat that gets dropped by the linker. So is it not legal to have an
>> alias to a weak symbol in a comdat (i.e. alias from outside the comdat)? We
>> don't complain in the compiler.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Teresa
>> --
>> Teresa Johnson |  Software Engineer |  tejohnson at google.com |
>> 408-460-2413 <(408)%20460-2413>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> --
> Peter
>

-- 
Teresa Johnson |  Software Engineer |  tejohnson at google.com |  408-460-2413
<(408)%20460-2413>
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