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[Sema] Reject array element types whose sizes aren't a multiple of their alignments
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Authored by ahatanak on Sep 12 2022, 10:15 AM.

Details

Summary

In the following code, the first element is aligned on a 16-byte boundary, but the remaining elements aren't:

typedef char int8_a16 __attribute__((aligned(16)));
int8_a16 array[4];

Currently clang doesn't reject the code, but it should since it can cause crashes at runtime. This patch also fixes assertion failures in CodeGen caused by the changes in https://reviews.llvm.org/D123649.

Diff Detail

Event Timeline

ahatanak created this revision.Sep 12 2022, 10:15 AM
Herald added a project: Restricted Project. · View Herald TranscriptSep 12 2022, 10:15 AM
ahatanak requested review of this revision.Sep 12 2022, 10:15 AM
efriedma added inline comments.
clang/lib/Sema/SemaType.cpp
2406 ↗(On Diff #459493)

I think you need to check that the size is a multiple of the alignment, not just larger than the alignment. (Those are only the same thing if the size is a power of two; it looks like you don't have any test coverage for non-power-of-two sizes.)

rnk added a comment.Sep 13 2022, 9:06 AM

Usually the solution is to round up the size to the alignment. Can you provide godbolt examples of what GCC and MSVC do?

Usually the solution is to round up the size to the alignment. Can you provide godbolt examples of what GCC and MSVC do?

gcc prints a similar error, MSVC doesn't support an equivalent alignment attribute.

It looks like gcc started rejecting the code relatively recently (11.1).

Also, I found out that MSVC doesn't reject the following code:

struct T0 { char c; };
struct T2 : virtual T0 { };
T2 array[2];

The size of T2 is 5 and its alignment is 4. The size of array is 10 bytes.

https://godbolt.org/z/c1EzdYqPc

Unlike gcc or clang. MSVC doesn't round up the size to its alignment. I don't mean it should reject the code.

It looks like gcc started rejecting the code relatively recently (11.1).

On what example? The code in the commit message gives an error on gcc 5.

Also, I found out that MSVC doesn't reject the following code:

This looks like a backwards-compatibility quirk in the 32-bit x86 MSVC ABI; other MSVC targets round up the size, and even adding __declspec(align(1)) forces the size to something sane. Don't know if we want to try to emulate this.

I was looking at another example. The following code is accepted by 10.3, but is rejected by 11.1 because the size isn't a multiple of the alignment.

struct __attribute__((packed)) S {
  char c;
  int i;
};

typedef S AlignedS __attribute__((aligned(4)));
AlignedS array[4];

https://godbolt.org/z/hcoznss1d

Unlike gcc or clang. MSVC doesn't round up the size to its alignment. I don't mean it should reject the code.

Sorry, my comment was misleading. clang has the same behavior as MSVC when the target is 32-bit (e.g., i686-pc-win32). The size and alignment of T2 and array are the same. If the target isn't 32-bit MSVC, the size is correctly round up to the alignment.

Oh, so you mean we need to consider whether we need to avoid emitting an error message when we're dealing with C++ code targeting i686-pc-win32, given we implement the alignment quirk. I think I'd like to try printing an error message, given it's reasonably likely you'll actually end up with a miscompile if you use an array like that. This might cause breakage, but I don't see a good alternative. (We don't try to mitigate the possibility of misaligned operations in clang, so LLVM will see misaligned operations, so LLVM optimizations will likely mess up the code. MSVC gets away with this because it doesn't really do alignment-based optimizations.)

For the gcc 10 vs. 11 thing, not sure how many people will notice. The most likely possibility here is that someone tried to align a struct, but put the attribute in the wrong place. Maybe we want a diagnostic note to point out this usage.

No, I was thinking perhaps clang has to round up the size to the alignment when the target is 32-bit MSVC too. The code in https://godbolt.org/z/c1EzdYqPc is perfectly valid so I don't think we want to reject it, but we don't want to keep emitting buggy code either.

I was just wondering whether we'd run into problems if clang started behaving differently than MSVC (i.e., increase T2's size to 8B from 5B).

Messing with the layout is risky. If we give an error, the user will notice something is wrong, and can adapt their code (e.g. explicitly enforcing alignment using alignas). If we silently use a different layout, and the class is used across compilers, the user ends up with a miscompile that's hard to diagnose.

rnk added a comment.Sep 14 2022, 9:54 AM

I agree, there's no reason to change the i686 MSVC record layout algorithm. It was written, tested, done, it's fragile. We used to have some decent continuous integration testing for ABI issues like this, but as usual these things require care and feeding and it did not survive the passage of time.

This patch implements the new GCC behavior, right? Reject arrays when size is not a multiple of alignment? That sounds good to me.

ahatanak updated this revision to Diff 460207.Sep 14 2022, 1:48 PM
ahatanak retitled this revision from [Sema] Reject array element types whose alignments are larger than their sizes to [Sema] Reject array element types whose sizes aren't a multiple of their alignments.

Check whether the size is a multiple of the alignment.

This revision is now accepted and ready to land.Sep 14 2022, 2:05 PM
rnk added a comment.Sep 14 2022, 2:45 PM

This seems like a new error that will be pretty easy to run into, especially in the funky MSVC virtual base case. @aaron.ballman proposed some kind of new breaking change announcement mechanism. Can you add a release note and send an announcement following that process? I think it's just posting to Discourse announcements.

Overall this seems like the right thing to do.

clang/test/Layout/ms-x86-misalignedarray.cpp
10 ↗(On Diff #460207)

I think what I had in mind when I said let's not change record layout is, let's keep doing what we were doing if we are targeting MSVC. But, what you've done is principled, so if we can ship it, it would be for the best.

efriedma added a reviewer: Restricted Project.Sep 14 2022, 3:04 PM

This seems like a new error that will be pretty easy to run into, especially in the funky MSVC virtual base case. @aaron.ballman proposed some kind of new breaking change announcement mechanism. Can you add a release note and send an announcement following that process? I think it's just posting to Discourse announcements.

I just landed the change to the release notes so there's now a potentially breaking changes section to put the note under. We're not quite ready to post to announcements yet (that channel is locked so we need to remove the gatekeeping mechanism there), but when I'm able to post to announcements, I plan to announce everything already in the release notes anyway. So I'd say adding clang-vendors like @efriedma did and putting in the release notes is great for now.

Note, precommit CI found a relevant failure:

******************** TEST 'Clang :: CodeGenCXX/override-layout-packed-base.cpp' FAILED ********************

Script:

--

: 'RUN: at line 1';   /var/lib/buildkite-agent/builds/llvm-project/build/bin/clang -cc1 -internal-isystem /var/lib/buildkite-agent/builds/llvm-project/build/lib/clang/16.0.0/include -nostdsysteminc -triple i686-windows-msvc -w -fdump-record-layouts-simple -foverride-record-layout=/var/lib/buildkite-agent/builds/llvm-project/clang/test/CodeGenCXX/Inputs/override-layout-packed-base.layout /var/lib/buildkite-agent/builds/llvm-project/clang/test/CodeGenCXX/override-layout-packed-base.cpp | /var/lib/buildkite-agent/builds/llvm-project/build/bin/FileCheck /var/lib/buildkite-agent/builds/llvm-project/clang/test/CodeGenCXX/override-layout-packed-base.cpp

--

Exit Code: 1



Command Output (stderr):

--

/var/lib/buildkite-agent/builds/llvm-project/clang/test/CodeGenCXX/override-layout-packed-base.cpp:38:7: error: size of array element of type 'C' (11 bytes) isn't a multiple of its alignment (4 bytes)

  C cs[sizeof(C)];

      ^

/var/lib/buildkite-agent/builds/llvm-project/clang/test/CodeGenCXX/override-layout-packed-base.cpp:39:7: error: size of array element of type 'D' (15 bytes) isn't a multiple of its alignment (4 bytes)

  D ds[sizeof(D)];

      ^

2 errors generated.



--



********************
ahatanak updated this revision to Diff 460735.Sep 16 2022, 6:50 AM
  • Fix failing CodeGen test.
  • Add release note to the Potentially Breaking Changes section.

I'm going to commit this in a day or two if there are no more comments.

rnk accepted this revision.Sep 19 2022, 9:21 AM

Sound like a good plan. 👍

This has caused 2 test suite failures across our bots, for example: https://lab.llvm.org/buildbot/#/builders/174/builds/13518 GCC-C-execute-pr36093.test / GCC-C-execute-pr43783.test

Pretty likely the tests are doing something strange, I will look into it.

GCC also rejects those tests so https://reviews.llvm.org/D134417 to disable them.

hans added a subscriber: hans.Sep 26 2022, 4:26 AM

This also fires in non-array cases:

$ cat /tmp/a.cc
struct T0 { char c; };
struct T2 : virtual T0 { };

T2* f() { return new T2(); }

$ /work/llvm-project/build/bin/clang++ -c -target i686-pc-win32 /tmp/a.cc
/tmp/a.cc:4:22: error: size of array element of type 'T2' (5 bytes) isn't a multiple of its alignment (4 bytes)
T2* f() { return new T2(); }
                     ^
1 error generated.

I don't think we want to error here?

Thanks for reporting the bug.

Sema::CheckAllocatedType can be called when the allocated type isn't an array, so checkArrayElementAlignment shouldn't be called in that function.

ahatanak updated this revision to Diff 462938.Sep 26 2022, 9:38 AM

Check whether the allocated type is an array type before calling checkArrayElementAlignment.

Please try to avoid uploading multiple independent patches into the same revision; it's confusing for anyone who comes looking for the review of the initial patch, and only finds the followup.

That said, fix looks fine, sure.