Because this logic reformulates the query in terms of some other aspect
of the API, it would easily cause O(n^2) query patterns in alias
analysis. These could in turn be magnified further based on the number
of call arguments, and then further based on the number of AA queries
made for a particular call. This ended up causing problems for Rust that
were actually noticable enough to get a bug (PR26564) and probably other
places as well.
When originally re-working the AA infrastructure, the desire was to
regularize the pattern of refinement without losing any generality.
While I think it was successful, that is clearly proving to be too
costly. And the cost is needless: we gain no actual improvement for this
generality of making a direct query to tbaa actually be able to
re-use some other alias analysis's refinement logic for one of the other
APIs, or some such. In short, this is entirely wasted work.
To the extent possible, delegation to other API surfaces should be done
at the aggregation layer so that we can avoid re-walking the
aggregation. In fact, this significantly simplifies the logic as we no
longer need to smuggle the aggregation layer into each alias analysis
(or the TargetLibraryInfo into each alias analysis just so we can form
argument memory locations!).
However, we also have some delegation logic inside of BasicAA and some
of it even makes sense. When the delegation logic is baking in specific
knowledge of aliasing properties of the LLVM IR, as opposed to simply
reformulating the query to utilize a different alias analysis interface
entry point, it makes a lot of sense to restrict that logic to
a different layer such as BasicAA. So one aspect of the delegation that
was in every AA base class is that when we don't have operand bundles,
we re-use function AA results as a fallback for callsite alias results.
This relies on the IR properties of calls and functions w.r.t. aliasing,
and so seems a better fit to BasicAA. I've lifted the logic up to that
point where it seems to be a natural fit. This still does a bit of
redundant work (we query function attributes twice, once via the
callsite and once via the function AA query) but it is *exactly* twice
here, no more.
The end result is that all of the delegation logic is hoisted out of the
base class and into either the aggregation layer when it is a pure
retargeting to a different API surface, or into BasicAA when it relies
on the IR's aliasing properties. This should fix the quadratic query
pattern reported in PR26564, although I don't have a stand-alone test
case to reproduce it.
It also seems general goodness. Now the numerous AAs that don't need
target library info don't carry it around and depend on it. I think
I can even rip out the general access to the aggregation layer and only
expose that in BasicAA as it is the only place where we re-query in that
manner.
However, this is a non-trivial change to the AA infrastructure so I want
to get some additional eyes on this before it lands. Sadly, it can't
wait long because we should really cherry pick this into 3.8 if we're
going to go this route.