Re: [PATCH 01/12] extarray: define helpers for arrays defined in linker scripts

[Richard Biener]

On Wed, 2 Nov 2016, Markus Trippelsdorf wrote:

> On 2016.10.19 at 12:25 +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> > On Wed, Oct 19, 2016 at 11:33:41AM +0200, Richard Biener wrote:
> > > On Wed, 19 Oct 2016, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> > 
> > > > This is also an entirely different class of optimizations than the whole
> > > > pointer arithmetic is only valid inside an object thing.
> > > 
> > > Yes, it is not related to that.  I've opened 
> > > https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=78035 to track an
> > > inconsistency in that new optimization.
> > > 
> > > > The kernel very much relies on unbounded pointer arithmetic, including
> > > > overflow. Sure, C language says its UB, but we know our memory layout,
> > > > and it would be very helpful if we could define it.
> > > 
> > > It's well-defined and correctly handled if you do the arithmetic
> > > in uintptr_t.  No need for knobs.
> > 
> > So why not extend that to the pointers themselves and be done with it?
> > 
> > In any case, so you're saying our:
> > 
> > #define RELOC_HIDE(ptr, off)						\
> > ({									\
> > 	unsigned long __ptr;						\
> > 	__asm__ ("" : "=r"(__ptr) : "0"(ptr));				\
> > 	(typeof(ptr)) (__ptr + (off));					\
> > })
> > 
> > could be written like:
> > 
> > #define RELOC_HIDE(ptr, off)			\
> > ({						\
> > 	uintptr_t __ptr = (ptr);		\
> > 	(typeof(ptr)) (__ptr + (off));		\
> > })
> > 
> > Without laundering it through inline asm?
> > 
> > Is there any advantage to doing so?
> > 
> > But this still means we need to be aware of this and use these macros to
> > launder our pointers.
> > 
> > Which gets us back to the issue that started this whole thread. We have
> > code that now gets miscompiled, silently.
> > 
> > That is a bad situation. So we need to either avoid the miscompilation,
> > or make it verbose.
> 
> FYI this issue was fixed on gcc trunk by:
> https://gcc.gnu.org/git/?p=gcc.git;a=commitdiff;h=76bc343a2f1aa540e3f5c60e542586bb1ca0e032

Note while this change restored the old behavior this change was _not_
intended to fix this particular fallout (it was to fix an inconsistency
with respect to comparing addresses of symbols that can be interposed).
It just happens that your externs can be interposed with ELF.

Richard.