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[yaml2obj] - Implement the "SectionHeaderTable" tag.
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Authored by grimar on May 15 2020, 5:43 AM.

Details

Summary

With the "SectionHeaderTable" it is now possible to reorder
entries in the section header table.

It also allows to stop emitting the table.

Diff Detail

Event Timeline

grimar created this revision.May 15 2020, 5:43 AM
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This is a good idea.

llvm/lib/ObjectYAML/ELFEmitter.cpp
1457

try_emplace can remove {}

1463

Use ArrayRef::slice to skip SHT_NULL.

1468

section name should be present in the Sections list

1472

auto &

llvm/test/tools/yaml2obj/ELF/section-headers.yaml
31

Fill not indented correctly.

39

Can Sections be omitted?

grimar marked an inline comment as done.May 17 2020, 3:40 AM
grimar added inline comments.
llvm/test/tools/yaml2obj/ELF/section-headers.yaml
39

It was done intentionally. I am thinking about adding a one more "Location"/"Offset" tag here in a follow-up
which should allow placing the table before/after sections or, perhaps, to a particular location either:

SectionHeaderTable:
  Offset: AutoBefore
  Sections:
  ...

(Something like was mentioned here: https://reviews.llvm.org/D78927#inline-732176)

Mostly looks good, but a number of small comments from me.

llvm/include/llvm/ObjectYAML/ELFYAML.h
88

If there's nothing stopping it, I'd prefer to make this SectionHeader (in commong with FileHeader and ProgramHeader). Variable names could then be changed to SecHdr where necessary.

520

SectionHeaders

llvm/lib/ObjectYAML/ELFEmitter.cpp
320

I'm not convinced we should do this. This field doesn't change according to the ELF gABI when there are no section headers (unlike e_shnum and e_shoff).

331

Maybe change this to else if (Doc.SectionHeader && Doc.SectionHeader->sections.empty()) and then get rid of the (!Doc.SectionHeader) clause, since it has the same effect as the final else.

339

I take it Doc.getSections() includes a null section header already?

343

I'm wondering whether we should make the null section explicit in the SectionHeaderTable block. This allows us to omit that section header entirely, or to have just a section header table containing only the null shdr.

llvm/test/tools/yaml2obj/ELF/section-headers.yaml
61

I'm not sure what this message is trying to say, but I'm assuming it's "omits any section that exists." which I think would be a clearer way of phrasing.

62

Rather than calling the section "undefined", which implies something to do with SHN_UNDEF, let's go with "non-existent".

63–64

I don't feel strongly about this, so if you prefer this way, that's fine, but I personally prefer the first line to end with | \ and the second line to be indented slightly, i.e.

# RUN: not yaml2obj ... | \
# RUN:   FileCheck ...

The reasoning is 1) the '|' shows the command is done, and 2), the indentation shows it's a continuation implicitly.

105

"section header" -> "section header table" (or possibly just "section headers")

grimar updated this revision to Diff 266005.May 25 2020, 5:13 AM
grimar marked 20 inline comments as done.
  • Rebased.
  • Addressed review comments.
MaskRay added inline comments.May 25 2020, 9:46 AM
llvm/lib/ObjectYAML/ELFEmitter.cpp
343

Making the SHT_NULL section explicit in SectionHeaderTable seems fine, but how do we encode it?

The SHT_NULL section in Sections remains on-demand implicit.

grimar added inline comments.May 26 2020, 6:31 AM
llvm/lib/ObjectYAML/ELFEmitter.cpp
320

OK. I've reverted this piece.

339

Yes. It is either defined explicitly in a YAML or we implicilty add it much earlier:

template <class ELFT>
ELFState<ELFT>::ELFState(ELFYAML::Object &D, yaml::ErrorHandler EH)
    : Doc(D), ErrHandler(EH) {
  std::vector<ELFYAML::Section *> Sections = Doc.getSections();
  // Insert SHT_NULL section implicitly when it is not defined in YAML.
  if (Sections.empty() || Sections.front()->Type != ELF::SHT_NULL)
    Doc.Chunks.insert(
        Doc.Chunks.begin(),
        std::make_unique<ELFYAML::Section>(
            ELFYAML::Chunk::ChunkKind::RawContent, /*IsImplicit=*/true));
...
343

This allows us to omit that section header entirely, or to have just a section header table containing only the null shdr.

Is it useful? (I am not sure I can imagine a use case except creating of a specific broken object,
though it should be possible to create such using SHOff even right now. I.e. SHOff could point to a hand crafted table. Or just to the first header directly, to skip the null one. I agree that is not that straightforward though).

The current implementation is that SectionHeaderTable must list all sections (null section is an exception). I think it is a nice propery,
because it seems can be easy to forget to mention a section and omit it by mistake. E.g. in this patch I've to add implicit sections like ".shstrtab" and ".strtab" manually.

Perhaps, we might introduce a new explicit syntax to describe omitted sections if you want to have such feature. E.g:

SectionHeaderTable:
  Sections:
  ...
  Excluded:
    - foo
    - bar

I'm wondering whether we should make the null section explicit

My concern is that we'll have an unnecessary noise in most of the test cases that use SectionHeaderTable then. Usually
test cases do not need to do anything with the SHT_NULL section. Perhaps, the new explicit syntax might help here too.
Like:

SectionHeaderTable:
  CreateImplicitNullSection: false
1457

Nice!

1463

getSections() returns std::vector..

llvm/test/tools/yaml2obj/ELF/section-headers.yaml
63–64

I usually also do in this way I think. Not sure why did differently that time. Fixed.

grimar added a comment.EditedMay 26 2020, 6:32 AM

(For some reason seems I also forgot to push "submit" for my comments previously. Sorry!).

jhenderson accepted this revision.May 27 2020, 1:08 AM

LGTM, with two nits.

llvm/lib/ObjectYAML/ELFEmitter.cpp
343

Let's leave it for a future extension for when the need arises, with the suggested explicit syntax.

1473

Formatting here looks off to me? Also, why not const &?

(I think @MaskRay was suggesting const auto &It with a space in the right place)

llvm/test/tools/yaml2obj/ELF/section-headers.yaml
106

when do not -> when we do not

This revision is now accepted and ready to land.May 27 2020, 1:08 AM
grimar marked an inline comment as done.May 27 2020, 1:55 AM
grimar added inline comments.
llvm/lib/ObjectYAML/ELFEmitter.cpp
1473

Ah.. I understood it differently: there is just a single line where It is used and it is obvious it does not change. LLVM uses auto without const in many places (as well as with the const), so I've removed it because assumed that the comment was about that we can omit it for the slightly shorter code.

I do not have any preference by myself, because I do not like using "auto" in general and so both ways does not look very nice to me. I'll return the "const" back since the initial comment was misunderstood.

grimar updated this revision to Diff 266487.May 27 2020, 4:22 AM
grimar marked an inline comment as done.
grimar edited the summary of this revision. (Show Details)
  • Addressed comments.

@MaskRay, are you OK with it?

MaskRay accepted this revision.May 27 2020, 8:17 AM

Looks great!

llvm/lib/ObjectYAML/ELFEmitter.cpp
1473

const auto & is fine. The full type may be too cumbersome to type.

This revision was automatically updated to reflect the committed changes.