[llvm-dev] DW_OP_implicit_pointer design/implementation in general
David Blaikie via llvm-dev
llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org
Wed Dec 18 15:24:08 PST 2019
(I'm still pretty concerned that there are IR changes going in for a
feature that seems incomplete and more invasive than really seems justified
to me - though I admit I'm clearly not paying enough attention to this
feature to have a nuanced/fully informed opinion & so maybe I just need to
step back from all of this - but given the addition of new intrinsics, it
seems like there should be more clear design discussion)
On Tue, Dec 10, 2019 at 9:06 PM Alok Sharma <aloksharma.knit at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Hi David,
>
> This is regarding missing multilevel handling in branch for explicit
> pointers.
>
> > * does the proposed IR format support multiple layers of dereference
> (eg: int ** where we know it ultimately points to the value 3 but can't
> describe either the first or second level pointers that get to that value)
> - it sounds like any intrinsic that's special cased to deref (like
> llvm.dbg.derefval) wouldn't be able to capture that, which seems like it's
> overly narrow/special case, then?
>
> The PoC of DW_OP_LLVM_explicit_pointer does not have handling of
> multilevel indirection. As of now it is so due to below reason.
>
> Explicit pointer handles cases when variable points to a temporary which
> contains constant. Due to language standard constraints, we don't find
> pointers in such cases, what we get is references. Unlike pointers,
> references have single level. (reference to reference is just reference
> while pointer to pointer is double pointer).
>
Case of reference to reference, second level can be handled using
> DW_OP_LLVM_explicit_pointer itself.
> Case of pointer to reference, second level can be handled using
> DW_OP_implicit_pointer.
>
> Though it would not be complex to make explicit pointer multilevel, I
> avoided so due to lack of use case. Please let me know if I am missing
> something.
>
Sorry, I couldn't understand your language related to references and
pointers - I don't understand why they would be handled differently or
represent challenges/tradeoffs for features related to collapsed
indirection like this.
Multi-level indirection seems to have as much use as single level
indirection. (if a DWARF user may want to know what a pointer points to
even when what it points to isn't in memory, the same would hold true for
pointers to pointers, etc)
I would expect this to be handled with a general OP saying "hey, I'm
skipping one level of indirection indirection in the resulting value,
because that indirection is missing/not in the final program" and that this
would be encoded in a llvm.dbg.value/DIExpression as usual, without the
need for new IR intrinsics, though possibly with the need for an LLVM
extension DWARF OP (DW_OP_LLVM_explicit_pointer?)
To reconstitute that general form into the current DWARF limited
"indirection needs to refer to another variable DIE" issue - as I think
Paul speculated previously, we could always reconstitute a synthetic
variable DIE & not try to reflect the case where the indirection lands at
another named/known variable - as I expect that's the minority case. In
most cases in C++ I expect pointers and references do not refer to named
variables in the same function. They refer to return values from functions,
they refer to array elements in dynamically allocated arrays, etc, etc.
>
> Regards,
> Alok
>
>
> On Fri, Nov 29, 2019 at 10:12 AM Alok Sharma <aloksharma.knit at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Let me try to summarize the implementation first.
>>
>> At the moment, there are two branches.
>>
>> 1. When an existing variable is optimized out and that variable is used
>> to get the de-refereced value, pointed to by another pointer/reference
>> variable.
>> Such cases are being addressed using Dwarf expression
>> DW_OP_implicit_pointer as de-referenced value of a pointer can be seen
>> implicitly (using another variable). Before Dwarf is dumped in LLVM IR, we
>> represent it using dbg.derefval (which denotes derefereced value of pointer
>> or reference) and DW_OP_LLVM_implicit_pointer operation.
>>
>> 2. When a temporary variable is optimized out and that variable is used
>> to get de-referenced value of another reference variable (AFAIK it can not
>> be reproduced with pointers)
>> Such cases are being addressed using new Dwarf expression
>> DW_OP_explicit_pointer as de-referenced value can be displayed explicitly
>> (in place). In LLVM IR, we represent it using dbg.derefval and
>> DW_OP_LLVM_explicit_pointer operation.
>>
>> Both of these two branches have some common implementation to define new
>> operations (Dwarf and IR). (D70642, D70643, D69999, D69886).
>> First branch has additional patches (D70260, 70384, D70385, D70419).
>> Second branch has additional patch ( D70833).
>>
>> Let me try to comment on points raised by you.
>> - Branch 2, (patch D70833) handles cases when temporaries (not existing
>> variables) are optimized out.
>> - In patch D70385, I have included test points to display that multi
>> layered pointers are working
>> (llvm/test/DebugInfo/dwarfdump-implicit_pointer_mem2reg.c).
>>
>> I feel that review of branch 1 (implicit pointer) can be resumed (which
>> was halted due to current discussion), while we can continue to discuss
>> branch 2 (explicit pointers D7083) if you want. David, what do you think?
>>
>> Regards,
>> Alok
>>
>> On Fri, Nov 29, 2019 at 4:40 AM David Blaikie <dblaikie at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Sorry I haven't been more engaged with this thread, I have been reading
>>> it, so hopefully my reply isn't completely out of line/irrelevant - but I
>>> still feel like having a custom dwarf expression operator (& no new
>>> intrinsics), like we have for one or two other DW_OP_LLVM_* (that aren't
>>> actually generated into the DWARF - though this one perhaps could be in
>>> some/all cases as an extension, maybe - or a synthesized variable could be
>>> created for compatibility with the current DWARF standard) would make the
>>> most sense.
>>>
>>> Some thought experiments that I think are relevant:
>>> * does the proposed IR format scale to pointers that don't point to
>>> existing variables (that I think has already been touched on in this thread)
>>> * does the proposed IR format support multiple layers of dereference
>>> (eg: int ** where we know it ultimately points to the value 3 but can't
>>> describe either the first or second level pointers that get to that value)
>>> - it sounds like any intrinsic that's special cased to deref (like
>>> llvm.dbg.derefval) wouldn't be able to capture that, which seems like it's
>>> overly narrow/special case, then?
>>>
>>> On Thu, Nov 28, 2019 at 2:29 PM Alok Sharma via llvm-dev <
>>> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi folks,
>>>>
>>>> I am pushing a PoC patch https://reviews.llvm.org/D70833 for review
>>>> which includes the case when temporary is promoted.
>>>>
>>>> For such cases it generates IR as
>>>>
>>>> call void @llvm.dbg.derefval(metadata i32 3, metadata !25, metadata
>>>> !DIExpression(DW_OP_LLVM_explicit_pointer, DW_OP_LLVM_arg0)), !dbg !32
>>>>
>>>> And llvm-darfdump output looks like
>>>>
>>>> -------------
>>>> 0x0000007b: DW_TAG_inlined_subroutine
>>>> DW_AT_abstract_origin (0x0000004f "_Z4sinkRKi")
>>>> DW_AT_low_pc (0x00000000004004c6)
>>>> DW_AT_high_pc (0x00000000004004d0)
>>>> DW_AT_call_file
>>>> ("/home/alok/openllvm/llvm-project_derefval/build.d/david.cc")
>>>> DW_AT_call_line (10)
>>>> DW_AT_call_column (0x03)
>>>>
>>>> 0x00000088: DW_TAG_formal_parameter
>>>> DW_AT_location (indexed (0x0) loclist =
>>>> 0x00000010:
>>>> [0x00000000004004c6, 0x00000000004004d4):
>>>> DW_OP_explicit_pointer, DW_OP_lit3)
>>>> DW_AT_abstract_origin (0x00000055 "p")
>>>> ------------
>>>>
>>>> Please note that DW_OP_explicit_pointer denotes that following value
>>>> represents de-referenced value of optimized out pointer. With necessary
>>>> changes in LLDB debugger this dwarf info can help to detect the explicit
>>>> de-referenced value of 'p'.
>>>>
>>>> Hi David,
>>>>
>>>> Should we keep on working for the above case separately and resume the
>>>> review of implicit pointer independently now, which is updated with many
>>>> suggestions from this discussion?
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>> Alok
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Nov 20, 2019 at 11:24 PM Jeremy Morse <
>>>> jeremy.morse.llvm at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>
>>>>> For a new way of representing things,
>>>>>
>>>>> Adrian wrote:
>>>>> > llvm.dbg.value_new(DILocalVariable("y"),
>>>>> DIExpression(DW_OP_LLVM_arg0, DW_OP_LLVM_arg1, DW_OP_plus),
>>>>> > %ptr, %ofs)
>>>>>
>>>>> I think this would be great -- there're definitely some constructs
>>>>> created by the induction-variables pass and similar where one could
>>>>> recover an implicit variable value, if you could for example subtract
>>>>> one pointer from another.
>>>>>
>>>>> With the current model of storing DIExpressions as a vector of
>>>>> opcodes, it might become a pain to salvage a Value that gets optimised
>>>>> out --in the example, if %ofs were salvaged, presumably
>>>>> DW_OP_LLVM_arg1 could have to be replaced with several extra
>>>>> operations. This isn't insurmountable, but I've repeatedly shied away
>>>>> from scanning through DIExpressions to patch them up. A vector of
>>>>> opcodes is the final output of the compiler, IMHO richer metadata
>>>>> should be used in the meantime.
>>>>>
>>>>> IMHO the implicit pointer work doesn't need to block on this. As said
>>>>> my mild preference would be for a new intrinsic for this form of
>>>>> variable location.
>>>>>
>>>>> ~
>>>>>
>>>>> Inre PR37682,
>>>>>
>>>>> > I’ve been reminded of PR37682, where a function with a reference
>>>>> parameter might spend all its time computing the “referenced” value in a
>>>>> temp, and only move the final value back to the referenced object at the
>>>>> end. This is clearly a situation that could benefit from
>>>>> DW_OP_implicit_pointer, and there is really no other-object DIE for it to
>>>>> refer to. Given the current spec, the compiler would need to produce a
>>>>> DW_TAG_dwarf_procedure for the parameter DIE to refer to. Appendix D
>>>>> (Figure D.61) has an example of this construction, although it’s a more
>>>>> contrived source example.
>>>>>
>>>>> This has been working through my mind too, and I think it's slightly
>>>>> different to what implicit_pointer is trying to achieve. In the case
>>>>> implicit_pointer is designed for, it's a strict improvement in debug
>>>>> experience because you're recovering information that couldn't be
>>>>> expressed. However for PR37682 it's a trade-off between whether the
>>>>> user might want to examine the pointer, or the pointed-at integer:
>>>>> AFAIUI, we can only express one of the two, not both. Wheras for
>>>>> mem2reg'd variables referred to by DIE, there is never a pointer to be
>>>>> lost.
>>>>>
>>>>> I think my preference would always be to see temporarily-promoted
>>>>> values as there's no other way of observing them, but others might
>>>>> disagree.
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>> Jeremy
>>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> LLVM Developers mailing list
>>>> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org
>>>> https://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev
>>>>
>>>
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