Re: [PATCH v3 0/9] klp-convert livepatch build tooling

[Joe Lawrence]

On 4/24/19 3:13 PM, Joao Moreira wrote:
> > > Future Work
> > > -----------
> > >
> > > I don't see an easy way to support multiple homonym <object, name>
> > > symbols with unique <position> values in the current livepatch module
> > > Elf format.  The only solutions that come to mind right now include
> > > renaming homonym symbols somehow to retain the relocation->symbol
> > > relationship when separate object files are combined.  Perhaps an
> > > intermediate linker step could make annotated symbols unique in some way
> > > to achieve this.  /thinking out loud
> > I'd set this aside for now and we can return to it later. I think it could
> > be quite rare in practice.

I agree, especially since we can detect this corner case and abort the 
translation.

> > I was thinking about renaming the symbol too. We can extend the symbol
> > naming convention we have now and deal with it in klp_resolve_symbols(),
> > but maybe Josh will come up with something clever and cleaner.
> I think this could work well, but (sorry if I understood Joe's idea
> wrongly) not as a linker step. Instead of modifying the linker, I think
> we could create another tool and plug it into the kbuild pipeline prior
> to the livepatch module linking. This way, we would parse the .o elf
> files, check for homonyms and rename them based on a convention that is
> later understood by klp-convert, as suggested.

My knowledge of the build tools is limited, so there was a bunch of 
hand-waving you couldn't see when I wrote that paragraph :) But yes, 
that is basically the idea: plugging into the kbuild pipeline to give 
these some kinda of .o-unique prefix that klp-convert would interpret 
and strip accordingly.

> If I am not missing something, this would fix the case where we have
> homonyms pointing to the same or different positions, without additional
> user intervention other then adding the SYMPOS annotations.
>
> If you consider this to be useful I can start experiencing.

It's not the highest priority, but even a prototype of how to insert a 
script into the pipeline to achieve this would be massively time saving 
for myself.  If renaming looks easy, we could try to work into the 
initial klp-convert patchset... if not, save it for a follow up enhancement.

Thanks,

-- Joe