[llvm-dev] MachineFunction Instructions Pass using Segment Registers

[K Jelesnianski via llvm-dev]

Dear Craig,

Thank you super much for the quick reply! Yea I'm still new to working
on the back-end and that sounds great. I already have the raw assembly
of what I want to accomplish so this is perfect. I just tried it and
yea, I will have to break down my assembly even further to more
simpler operations. You're right about my assembly dealing with
segment registers as I'm getting the following error:
"error: unknown use of instruction mnemonic without a size suffix"

Just curious, what does it mean by size suffix??

It's super cool to see the equivalent with "-show-inst"!!! Thank you
so much for this help!

Last note, I know that the definitions (e.g. def SUB32ri) of the
various instructions can be found in the various ****.td, but is there
documentation where the meaning or quick reference of every
X86::XXXXXX llvm instruction macro can found, so I can quickly pick
and choose which actual macro I need to use, to "work forwards" rather
than working backwards by writing the assembly first and using llvm-mc
-show-inst  ??

Thanks super much again.

Sincerely,

Chris Jelesnianski
Graduate Research Assistant
Virginia Tech

On Sat, Jun 23, 2018 at 8:45 PM, Craig Topper <craig.topper at gmail.com> wrote:
> More specifically there is no instruction that can add/subtract segment
> registers. They can only be updated my the mov segment register
> instructions, opcodes 0x8c and 0x8e in x86 assembly.
>
> I suggest you write the text version of the assembly you want to generate
> and assemble it with llvm-mc. This will tell you if its even valid. After
> that you can use -show-inst to print the names of the instructions that X86
> uses that you can give to BuildMI.
>
> ~Craig
>
>
> On Sat, Jun 23, 2018 at 5:36 PM Craig Topper <craig.topper at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> The SUB32ri can't instruction can't operate on segment registers. It
>> operates on EAX/EBX/EDX/ECX/EBP, etc. When it gets encoded only 3 or 4 bits
>> of the register value make it into the binary encoding. Objdump just
>> extracts those 3 or 4 bits back out and prints one of the
>> EAX/EBX/EDX/ECX/EBP registers that those bits correspond to.
>>
>> ~Craig
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Jun 23, 2018 at 5:28 PM K Jelesnianski via llvm-dev
>> <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Dear All,
>>>
>>> Currently I am trying to inject custom x86-64 assembly into a
>>> functions entry basic block. More specifically, I am trying to build
>>> assembly in a machine function pass from scratch.
>>>
>>> While the dumped machine function instruction info displays that %gs
>>> will be used, when I perform objdump -d on my executable I am see that
>>> %gs is replaced by %ebp? Why is this happening?
>>>
>>> I know it probably has something to do with me not specifying operands
>>> properly, but I cannot find enough documentation on this besides
>>> looking through code comments such as X86BaseInfo.cpp. I feel there
>>> isn't enough for me to be able to connect the dots.
>>>
>>> Below I have sample code: %gs holds a base address to a memory
>>> location where I am trying to store information. I am trying to update
>>> the %gs register pointer location before saving more values, etc.
>>>
>>> LLVM C++ codeMachine Function pass code:
>>> MachineInstrBuilder sss = BuildMI(MBB, MBB.begin(), DL,
>>> TII->get(X86::SUB32ri),X86::GS)
>>>                     .addReg(X86::GS)
>>>                     .addImm(0x8);
>>>
>>> machine function pass dump:
>>>  %gs = SUB32ri %gs, 8, implicit-def %eflags
>>>
>>> Objdump -d assembly from executable
>>>   400510:   81 ed 04 00 00 00       sub    $0x8,%ebp
>>>
>>>
>>> TLDR: I am trying to create custom assembly via BuildMI() and manipulate
>>> segment
>>> registers via a MachineFunctionPass.
>>>
>>> I have looked at LLVMs safestack implementation, but they are taking a
>>> fairly complicated hybrid approach between an IR Function pass with
>>> Backend support. I would like to stay as a single machinefunction
>>> pass.
>>>
>>> Believe me I would do this at the IR level if I didnt need to
>>> specifically use the segment registers.
>>>
>>> Thanks for the help in advance!
>>>
>>> Sincerely,
>>>
>>> Christopher Jelesnianski
>>> Graduate Research Assistant
>>> Virginia Tech
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> LLVM Developers mailing list
>>> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org
>>> http://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev