<li><a href="#undef">What is this "<tt>undef</tt>" thing that shows up in
my code?</a></li>
+
+ <li><a href="#callconvwrong">Why does instcombine + simplifycfg turn
+ a call to a function with a mismatched calling convention into "unreachable"?
+ Why not make the verifier reject it?</a></li>
</ol>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
<div class="question">
-<p><a href="srcdir-objdir">When I compile LLVM-GCC with srcdir == objdir, it
+<p><a name="srcdir-objdir">When I compile LLVM-GCC with srcdir == objdir, it
fails. Why?</a></p>
</div>
<p>Also, there are a number of other limitations of the C backend that cause it
to produce code that does not fully conform to the C++ ABI on most
platforms. Some of the C++ programs in LLVM's test suite are known to fail
- when compiled with the C back end because of ABI incompatiblities with
+ when compiled with the C back end because of ABI incompatibilities with
standard C++ libraries.</p>
</div>
portable is by using the preprocessor to include platform-specific code. In
practice, information about other platforms is lost after preprocessing, so
the result is inherently dependent on the platform that the preprocessing was
- targetting.</p>
+ targeting.</p>
<p>Another example is <tt>sizeof</tt>. It's common for <tt>sizeof(long)</tt> to
vary between platforms. In most C front-ends, <tt>sizeof</tt> is expanded to
- a constant immediately, thus hardwaring a platform-specific detail.</p>
+ a constant immediately, thus hard-wiring a platform-specific detail.</p>
<p>Also, since many platforms define their ABIs in terms of C, and since LLVM is
lower-level than C, front-ends currently must emit platform-specific IR in
value specified for it.</p>
</div>
+<!--=========================================================================-->
+
+<div class="question">
+<p><a name="callconvwrong">Why does instcombine + simplifycfg turn
+ a call to a function with a mismatched calling convention into "unreachable"?
+ Why not make the verifier reject it?</a></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="answer">
+<p>This is a common problem run into by authors of front-ends that are using
+custom calling conventions: you need to make sure to set the right calling
+convention on both the function and on each call to the function. For example,
+this code:</p>
+
+<pre class="doc_code">
+define fastcc void @foo() {
+ ret void
+}
+define void @bar() {
+ call void @foo( )
+ ret void
+}
+</pre>
+
+<p>Is optimized to:</p>
+
+<pre class="doc_code">
+define fastcc void @foo() {
+ ret void
+}
+define void @bar() {
+ unreachable
+}
+</pre>
+
+<p>... with "opt -instcombine -simplifycfg". This often bites people because
+"all their code disappears". Setting the calling convention on the caller and
+callee is required for indirect calls to work, so people often ask why not make
+the verifier reject this sort of thing.</p>
+
+<p>The answer is that this code has undefined behavior, but it is not illegal.
+If we made it illegal, then every transformation that could potentially create
+this would have to ensure that it doesn't, and there is valid code that can
+create this sort of construct (in dead code). The sorts of things that can
+cause this to happen are fairly contrived, but we still need to accept them.
+Here's an example:</p>
+
+<pre class="doc_code">
+define fastcc void @foo() {
+ ret void
+}
+define internal void @bar(void()* %FP, i1 %cond) {
+ br i1 %cond, label %T, label %F
+T:
+ call void %FP()
+ ret void
+F:
+ call fastcc void %FP()
+ ret void
+}
+define void @test() {
+ %X = or i1 false, false
+ call void @bar(void()* @foo, i1 %X)
+ ret void
+}
+</pre>
+
+<p>In this example, "test" always passes @foo/false into bar, which ensures that
+ it is dynamically called with the right calling conv (thus, the code is
+ perfectly well defined). If you run this through the inliner, you get this
+ (the explicit "or" is there so that the inliner doesn't dead code eliminate
+ a bunch of stuff):
+</p>
+
+<pre class="doc_code">
+define fastcc void @foo() {
+ ret void
+}
+define void @test() {
+ %X = or i1 false, false
+ br i1 %X, label %T.i, label %F.i
+T.i:
+ call void @foo()
+ br label %bar.exit
+F.i:
+ call fastcc void @foo()
+ br label %bar.exit
+bar.exit:
+ ret void
+}
+</pre>
+
+<p>Here you can see that the inlining pass made an undefined call to @foo with
+ the wrong calling convention. We really don't want to make the inliner have
+ to know about this sort of thing, so it needs to be valid code. In this case,
+ dead code elimination can trivially remove the undefined code. However, if %X
+ was an input argument to @test, the inliner would produce this:
+</p>
+
+<pre class="doc_code">
+define fastcc void @foo() {
+ ret void
+}
+
+define void @test(i1 %X) {
+ br i1 %X, label %T.i, label %F.i
+T.i:
+ call void @foo()
+ br label %bar.exit
+F.i:
+ call fastcc void @foo()
+ br label %bar.exit
+bar.exit:
+ ret void
+}
+</pre>
+
+<p>The interesting thing about this is that %X <em>must</em> be false for the
+code to be well-defined, but no amount of dead code elimination will be able to
+delete the broken call as unreachable. However, since instcombine/simplifycfg
+turns the undefined call into unreachable, we end up with a branch on a
+condition that goes to unreachable: a branch to unreachable can never happen, so
+"-inline -instcombine -simplifycfg" is able to produce:</p>
+
+<pre class="doc_code">
+define fastcc void @foo() {
+ ret void
+}
+define void @test(i1 %X) {
+F.i:
+ call fastcc void @foo()
+ ret void
+}
+</pre>
+
+</div>
+
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projects / oota-llvm.git / blobdiff