On Thu, May 28, 2015 at 05:37:53PM +0200, Andreas Krebbel wrote: > On 05/28/2015 11:16 AM, Maxim Kuvyrkov wrote: > >> On May 28, 2015, at 11:59 AM, Richard Biener <richard.guent...@gmail.com> > >> wrote: > ... > >> Maybe follow s390 -mhotpatch instead? > > > > Regarding implementation of the option, it will follow what s390 is doing > > with function attributes to mark which functions to apply nop-treatment to > > (using attributes will avoid problems with [coming] LTO builds of the > > kernel). The new option will set value of the attribute on all functions > > in current compilation unit, and then nops will be generated from the > > attribute specification. > > > > On the other hand, s390 does not generate a section of descriptor entries > > of NOP pads, which seems like a useful (or necessary) option. A > > more-or-less generic implementation should, therefore, combine s390's > > attributes approach to annotating functions and x86's approach to providing > > information in an ELF section about NOP entries. Or can we record value of > > a function attribute in ELF in a generic way? > > I agree that would be useful. The only reason we didn't implement that was > that our kernel guys were > confident enough to be able to detect patchable functions without it. We > discussed two solutions to > that: > > 1. Add special relocations pointing to the patchable areas. > 2. Add a special section listing all patchable areas. I think systemtap is > doing something similiar > for their probes. > As I am bit concerned with performance why require nops there? Add a byte count number >= requested thats boundary of next instruction. When lifepatching for return you need to copy this followed by jump back to next instruction. Then gcc could fill that with instructions that don't depend on address, fill with nops as trivial first implementation.
Would that be possible?
