[llvm-dev] [cfe-dev] Zero length function pointer equality

Wed Sep 8 14:05:48 PDT 2021

On Wed, 8 Sept 2021 at 13:20, Reid Kleckner via llvm-dev <
llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:

> IMO TrapUnreachable goes farther than most users want: for every noreturn
> function call (abort, assert_fail, cxa_throw), it would add a trap
> instruction. Those can be common, so that seems like a fairly high cost.
> And, it doesn't prevent the optimizer from exploiting UB to fold away a
> conditional branch to unreachable. If users want a mode with less UB, I
> think it would be more principled for the frontend to emit traps before
> every unreachable instruction, and to suppress the use of the LLVM noreturn
> function attribute.
>

Presumably the optimizer can still add the noreturn attribute back if it
can deduce it. I suspect that the more interesting `unreachable`s to trap
are the ones generated by the optimizer, not the ones generated by the
compiler after noreturn calls, since the latter are already within the
programmer's control (at least in principle).

I think it would be cheap and non-controversial to emit traps instead of
> zero-length functions, which are really just labels pointing at unrelated
> code. Various targets and object file formats already require this behavior
> (MachO for atomization, others for other reasons). I think it would be
> reasonable to make this behavior standard to all platforms.
>

I agree. LLVM should at least not be allowing unrelated symbols to have the
same address unless one of them is unnamed_addr. That currently results in
miscompiles that frontends can't do much about. And if we're going to pad
out zero-length functions anyway, we may as well use a trap instruction to
do so.

On Tue, Sep 7, 2021 at 5:24 AM Hans Wennborg via llvm-dev <
> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>
>> Did anything come of this?
>>
>> The Linux folks (cc Nick) keep running into issues where a function which
>> ends with unreachable can fall through to an unrelated function, which
>> confuses some machine code analyser they run (e.g.
>> https://github.com/ClangBuiltLinux/linux/issues/1440).
>>
>> It seems TrapUnreachable would avoid such issues.
>>
>> On Fri, Mar 19, 2021 at 10:11 PM David Blaikie <dblaikie at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Just writing it down in this thread - this issue's been discussed a bit
>>> in this bug: https://bugs.llvm.org/show_bug.cgi?id=49599
>>>
>>> And yeah, I'm considering adopting MachO's default (TrapUnreachable +
>>> NoTrapOnNoreturn) as the default for LLVM (will require some design
>>> discussion, no doubt) since it seems to capture most of the functionality
>>> desired. Maybe there are some cases where we have extra unreachables that
>>> could've otherwise been optimized away/elided, but hopefully nothing
>>> drastic.
>>>
>>> (some platforms still need the trap-on-noreturn - Windows+AArch64 and
>>> maybe Sony, etc - happy for some folks to opt into that). I wonder whether
>>> TrapUnreachable shouldn't even be an option anymore though, if it becomes
>>> load bearing for correctness - or should it become a fallback option - "no
>>> trap unreachable" maybe means nop instead of trap, in case your target
>>> can't handle a trap sometimes (I came across an issue with AMDGPU not being
>>> able to add traps to functions that it isn't expecting - the function needs
>>> some special attribute to have a trap in it - but I guess it can be updated
>>> to add that attribute if the function has an unreachable in it (though then
>>> it has to recreate the no-trap-on-noreturn handling too when deciding
>>> whether to add the attribute... ))
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jul 27, 2020 at 9:20 AM Robinson, Paul <paul.robinson at sony.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> > -----Original Message-----
>>>> > From: llvm-dev <llvm-dev-bounces at lists.llvm.org> On Behalf Of Hans
>>>> > Wennborg via llvm-dev
>>>> > Sent: Monday, July 27, 2020 9:11 AM
>>>> > To: David Blaikie <dblaikie at gmail.com>
>>>> > Cc: llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>; Clang Dev <
>>>> cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org>
>>>> > Subject: Re: [llvm-dev] [cfe-dev] Zero length function pointer
>>>> equality
>>>> >
>>>> > On Sat, Jul 25, 2020 at 3:40 AM David Blaikie <dblaikie at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> > >
>>>> > > Looks perfect to me!
>>>> > >
>>>> > > well, a couple of questions: Why a noop, rather than int3/ud2/etc?
>>>> >
>>>> > Probably no reason.
>>>>
>>>> FTR there is TargetOptions.TrapUnreachable, which some targets turn on
>>>> (for X86 it's on for MachO and PS4), this turns 'unreachable' into ud2.
>>>> Clearly it covers more than "empty" functions but is probably the kind
>>>> of thing you're looking for.
>>>> --paulr
>>>>
>>>> >
>>>> > > Might be worth using the existing code that places such an
>>>> instruction
>>>> > > when building at -O0?
>>>> >
>>>> > I wasn't aware of that. Does it happen for all functions (e.g. I think
>>>> > I got pulled into this due to functions with the naked attribute)?
>>>> >
>>>> > > & you mention that this causes problems on Windows - but ICF done by
>>>> > > the Windows linker does not cause such problems? (I'd have thought
>>>> > > they'd result in the same situation - two functions described as
>>>> being
>>>> > > at the same address?) is there a quick summary of why those two
>>>> cases
>>>> > > turn out differently?
>>>> >
>>>> > The case that we hit was that the Control Flow Guard table of
>>>> > addresses in the binary ended up listing the same address twice, which
>>>> > the loader didn't expect. It may be that the linker took care to avoid
>>>> > that for ICF (if two ICF'd functions got the same address, only list
>>>> > it once in the CFG table) but still didn't handle the "empty function"
>>>> > problem.
>>>> >
>>>> > > On Fri, Jul 24, 2020 at 6:17 AM Hans Wennborg <hans at chromium.org>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> > > >
>>>> > > > Maybe we can just expand this to always apply:
>>>> > https://reviews.llvm.org/D32330
>>>> > > >
>>>> > > > On Fri, Jul 24, 2020 at 2:46 AM David Blaikie via cfe-dev
>>>> > > > <cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>>>> > > > >
>>>> > > > > LLVM can produce zero length functions from cases like this
>>>> (when
>>>> > > > > optimizations are enabled):
>>>> > > > >
>>>> > > > > void f1() { __builtin_unreachable(); }
>>>> > > > > int f2() { /* missing return statement */ }
>>>> > > > >
>>>> > > > > This code is valid, so long as the functions are never called.
>>>> > > > >
>>>> > > > > I believe C++ requires that all functions have a distinct
>>>> address
>>>> > (ie:
>>>> > > > > &f1 != &f2) and LLVM optimizes code on this basis (assert(f1 ==
>>>> f2)
>>>> > > > > gets optimized into an unconditional assertion failure)
>>>> > > > >
>>>> > > > > But these zero length functions can end up with identical
>>>> addresses.
>>>> > > > >
>>>> > > > > I'm unaware of anything in the C++ spec (or the LLVM langref)
>>>> that
>>>> > > > > would indicate that would allow distinct functions to have
>>>> identical
>>>> > > > > addresses - so should we do something about this in the LLVM
>>>> > backend?
>>>> > > > > add a little padding? a nop instruction? (if we're adding an
>>>> > > > > instruction anyway, perhaps we might as well make it an int3?)
>>>> > > > >
>>>> > > > > (I came across this due to DWARF issues with zero length
>>>> functions &
>>>> > > > > thinking about if/how this should be supported)
>>>> > > > > _______________________________________________
>>>> > > > > cfe-dev mailing list
>>>> > > > > cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org
>>>> > > > > https://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/cfe-dev
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>>>>
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