From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme-H+wXaHxf7aLQT0dZR+AlfA@public.gmane.org>
Subject: Re: Can't persuade pahole to see through forward declarations
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:56:33 -0300
Message-ID: <20090617205633.GD21530@ghostprotocols.net>
References: <20090615172409.6f0f322b@mozilla.com> <20090617170217.GB21530@ghostprotocols.net> <20090617102506.34aaf8e2@mozilla.com>
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To: Zack Weinberg <zweinberg-4eJtQOnFJqFBDgjK7y7TUQ@public.gmane.org>
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Em Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 10:25:06AM -0700, Zack Weinberg escreveu:
> Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme-H+wXaHxf7aLQT0dZR+AlfA@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > Em Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 05:24:09PM -0700, Zack Weinberg escreveu:
> > > I've been experimenting with your 'pahole' utility to analyze some
> > > of the data structures in Mozilla.  I've run into trouble because
> > > pahole seems to give up when it hits a forward declaration (a type
> > > DIE with DW_AT_declaration=1).  For instance, this is what -E -M
> > > mode prints for one of the classes of interest:
> > > 
> > > class nsFrame : public nsBox, public nsIFrameDebug {
> > > public:
> > > 	/* class nsBox {
> > > 	} <ancestor>; */              /*     0     0 */
> > > 
> > > 	/* XXX 64 bytes hole, try to pack */
> > > 
> > > 	/* --- cacheline 1 boundary (64 bytes) --- */
> > > 	/* class nsIFrameDebug {
> > > 		int ()(void) * *_vptr.nsIFrameDebug; 
> > > 			/*	64     8 */ 
> > > 	} <ancestor>; */ /*    64     8 */
> > > 
> > > 	/* size: 72, cachelines: 2, members: 2 */
> > > 	/* sum members: 8, holes: 1, sum holes: 64 */
> > > 	/* last cacheline: 8 bytes */
> > > };
> > > 
> > > As you can see, because it only sees the forward declaration for
> > > class nsBox, it thinks there's a gigantic hole in this class.  This
> > > makes it very hard to look for real problems.
> > > 
> > > I tried to patch pahole to look through forward declarations
> > > whenever possible (using cus__find_struct_by_name) but could not
> > > get it to work, even after switching the main loop from a load
> > > stealer to an iteration over all CUs after they're all loaded.  I
> > > get gibberish:
> > > 
> > > class nsFrame : public nsBox, public nsIFrameDebug {
> > > public:
> > > 	/* class nsBox : public M-0M-^I^D {
> > > 	public:
> > > 		/* PLDHashNumber      (<ancestor>)(PLDHashTable *,
> > > 		const void  *); */    /*     0     0 */
> > > 	} <ancestor>; */ /*     0     0 */
> > > 	/* XXX 64 bytes hole, try to pack */
> > > ...
> > > 
> > > I'm attaching the code changes I made.  Any advice you could give me
> > > would be greatly appreciated.  Note that there are two other changes
> > > in there -- I had to take out the cmake test for libebl, whatever
> > > that is (nothing fails to link without it), and I also changed -M
> > > mode to not print vtables.
> > 
> > I'm trying to figure this out, but the xulrunner debuginfo file I have
> > doesn't have the nsIFrameDebug class as an ancestor for nsFrame:
> 
> This is probably because it was configured out.  I am working with a 
> development build, which has all sorts of extra debugging mechanisms
> configured in.
> 
> > Anyway, it shows nsBox as a zero sized class, which it isn't. Problem
> > is that if we process _just_ this CU we will never know what is the
> > size for nsBox... but should be doable for multi-CU files where we
> > can try to find another CU with the missing definition.
> 
> Right, that's what I figured was the problem.
> 
> > This will require a bit more coding, so that we can first go on
> > discarding CUs till we find class nsFrame, then if we find forward
> > decls in it, we must steal the CU and set it aside, then continue to
> > the other CUs, till we find the one with the class nsBox definition,
> > then process the first CU with nsFrame and when not finding
> > definitions for some of its ancestors, look on the other CU where we
> > found the nsBox definition.
> 
> What if the CU that has the nsBox definition has already gone past when
> we hit the one with nsFrame?  It seems to me that this would only work
> for some link orders.
> 
> > Look below for a coment explaining the bug in your code.
> 
> Thanks!  That makes sense.  Meantime I've written code to post-process
> the incomplete output and fill in the missing classes, though.
> 
> 
> Tangentially, I would really like to be able to pass a *list* of
> structure/class names to -C (or have a separate option that reads a
> list from a file).  The full analysis I'm doing needs to look at 200 or
> so of the thousands of classes in xulrunner; currently I need to run
> pahole once for each, which is really slow.

Sure, I'll do that, getting the list thru -C and also from a filename,
then on each CU I'll just try to find every entry in this list, removing
from the list the ones I find/print and stopping the whole process after
no more entries are in the list.
 
> Also, I wonder if you could see your way clear to adding an alternative
> output format that is easily machine-parseable?
> Approximation-to-C-source format is nice for humans but I've spent the
> past day and a bit writing a sed script to turn it into something that
> I can do programmed analysis on and it was no fun.

What do you suggest? Removing \n and comments (that already can be
removed thru conf knobs)?

I'm open to whatever changes makes these utilities more useful.

- Arnaldo
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