rucc_object/section.rs
1//! What an object writer is given, which is a section of bytes and what the linker has to be
2//! told about them.
3//!
4//! Design: `spec/11-asm-objects-debug.md` sections 11.1 and 11.3.
5//!
6//! These types are here rather than beside the assembler that fills them in because they are what
7//! an object file is made of, and because a writer cannot depend on the thing that produces its
8//! input without the graph going the wrong way round. The assembler at layer rank 11 reaches down
9//! to these at rank 9, which is the direction `spec/18-package-layout.md` asks for.
10
11/// What a function is aligned to when nothing asked for more.
12///
13/// Sixteen because that is what every x86-64 toolchain puts a function at, and because it is what
14/// keeps the loop inside one from straddling one more cache line than it has to. Here rather than
15/// beside the assembler because the assembler pads to it and the writer records it, and two
16/// copies of one number is how the padding and the record come apart.
17pub const FUNC_ALIGN: u32 = 16;
18
19/// Whether each function and each variable gets a section to itself.
20///
21/// Design: `spec/11-asm-objects-debug.md` section 11.3, and `spec/04-driver-and-cli.md` section 4.7
22/// for the flags that ask for it.
23///
24/// A linker can drop a section nothing reaches and cannot drop half of one, so a file whose
25/// functions share a section keeps every function that file defines in the output as soon as any
26/// one of them is called. Splitting them is what makes `--gc-sections` do anything, which is how an
27/// embedded image or a kernel gets small, and it is the whole of what these two flags are for. The
28/// cost is a section header per name, which is why it is asked for rather than always done.
29///
30/// Not one flag, because gcc has two and a build that wants one of them and not the other is a
31/// build that measured something. Splitting the code is nearly free at link time; splitting the
32/// data can defeat the linker's ordering of what is next to what.
33#[derive(Debug, Clone, Copy, Default, PartialEq, Eq)]
34pub struct Sections {
35 /// `-ffunction-sections`. Each function in `.text.<name>` rather than all of them in `.text`.
36 pub functions: bool,
37 /// `-fdata-sections`. Each variable in a section named after it rather than in the one its
38 /// contents would otherwise have chosen.
39 pub data: bool,
40}
41
42impl Sections {
43 /// Whether either of them was asked for.
44 #[must_use]
45 pub const fn any(self) -> bool {
46 self.functions || self.data
47 }
48}
49
50/// What a file says it was built to have checked, which is what `-fcf-protection=` asks for.
51///
52/// Design: `spec/11-asm-objects-debug.md` section 11.3, and `spec/04-driver-and-cli.md` section 4.7
53/// for the flag.
54///
55/// A machine's control flow checks are turned on for a whole process or not at all, never for one
56/// function, so a program made of one object built with them and one built without has to be run
57/// one way or the other. What everybody settled on is that each object records what it was built
58/// for, the linker keeps only what every input agreed on, and the loader turns on what is left. So
59/// an object that records nothing turns the check off for every object it is linked with, which is
60/// why this is written even when the flag changed no instruction in the file.
61///
62/// One number rather than a pair of flags, because that is what the record holds: a word of bits
63/// whose meaning is the machine's, and a linker that has never heard of a bit still knows to drop
64/// it when one input does not have it.
65#[derive(Debug, Clone, Copy, Default, PartialEq, Eq)]
66pub struct Property {
67 /// The bits of the x86 feature word, which are [`Self::IBT`] and [`Self::SHSTK`].
68 pub features: u32,
69}
70
71impl Property {
72 /// Which property the feature word is, which is the key the record is written under.
73 pub const X86_FEATURES: u32 = 0xc000_0002;
74 /// Indirect branch tracking: every indirect call and jump in the file arrives at a landing
75 /// pad, so the machine may fault on one that does not.
76 pub const IBT: u32 = 1;
77 /// The shadow stack: every return in the file goes where a second copy of the return address
78 /// says it should, so the machine may fault when the two disagree.
79 pub const SHSTK: u32 = 2;
80
81 /// Whether anything is recorded at all, which is whether the record is written.
82 #[must_use]
83 pub const fn any(self) -> bool {
84 self.features != 0
85 }
86}
87
88/// What the command line decided about the file being written, as against what the code in it
89/// decided.
90///
91/// Two answers with nothing to do with each other, together because they arrive together: neither
92/// can be worked out from a function, and the listing and the byte writer have to be handed the
93/// same pair or the two outputs of one command line would not be the same file.
94#[derive(Debug, Clone, Copy, Default, PartialEq, Eq)]
95pub struct Output {
96 /// Whether each function and each variable gets a section to itself.
97 pub sections: Sections,
98 /// What the file says it was built to have checked.
99 pub property: Property,
100}
101
102/// A text section, and what the linker has to be told about it.
103#[derive(Debug, Clone, PartialEq, Eq)]
104pub struct Text {
105 /// The instructions, in the order they were laid out.
106 pub bytes: Vec<u8>,
107 /// Where each function starts and how long it is, in the order they were written.
108 pub funcs: Vec<Extent>,
109 /// Every place in the bytes that names something the linker has to find.
110 pub relocs: Vec<Reloc>,
111 /// Every place inside a function that has a name of its own, in the order they were written.
112 pub labels: Vec<Marker>,
113 /// What the whole section has to be aligned to, which is the largest alignment any function
114 /// in it asked for.
115 ///
116 /// A function is at a fixed offset inside the section, so a function at a multiple of two
117 /// hundred and fifty six is one only if the section itself is at one. The padding between the
118 /// functions is the assembler's half of the same job and this is the linker's.
119 pub align: u32,
120 /// What an unwinder is told about the functions, which is empty for a format that has no such
121 /// section or a build that asked for none.
122 pub unwind: Unwind,
123}
124
125impl Default for Text {
126 fn default() -> Self {
127 Self {
128 bytes: Vec::new(),
129 funcs: Vec::new(),
130 relocs: Vec::new(),
131 labels: Vec::new(),
132 align: FUNC_ALIGN,
133 unwind: Unwind::default(),
134 }
135 }
136}
137
138/// The unwind table, as the bytes of its own section and what the linker has to be told about them.
139///
140/// Bytes rather than rows, because what a record is is DWARF's answer and not the object format's,
141/// and the layer that knows what a frame did is the one that can say it in the fewest of them. What
142/// is left for the writer is where the section goes and what its relocations are, which is the part
143/// the three formats disagree about.
144///
145/// Each record says where its function is as a distance from the record to the function, which is
146/// a number no compilation knows: a function is at a fixed offset inside its own section and the
147/// section is placed by the linker. So there is one relocation per record and it is the ordinary
148/// instruction pointer relative one, since the distance is between two things in the same file.
149#[derive(Debug, Clone, Default, PartialEq, Eq)]
150pub struct Unwind {
151 /// The records, one shared header and one per function.
152 pub bytes: Vec<u8>,
153 /// Every place in them that names a function the linker has to place.
154 pub relocs: Vec<Reloc>,
155}
156
157/// Where the room a patcher was promised at the top of a function ended up.
158///
159/// What `-fpatchable-function-entry=` asks for, once it is bytes rather than instructions. Two
160/// numbers because the writer has two questions: where the address it records points, and how much
161/// of the function is in front of the symbol.
162///
163/// They are not the same number. The room can be split by the landing pad a function opens with,
164/// since the pad has to be the first instruction after the label and the room does not, so the part
165/// in front of the label and the part after it are not always next to each other. What is recorded
166/// is the front of the whole thing, which is the part in front of the label when there is one.
167#[derive(Debug, Clone, Copy, PartialEq, Eq)]
168pub struct Patch {
169 /// Where the room begins, as an offset into the same bytes [`Extent::start`] is one into.
170 pub at: usize,
171 /// How many bytes of the function are in front of [`Extent::start`], which is where its symbol
172 /// is and where an unwinder is told the function begins.
173 pub before: usize,
174}
175
176/// Where a place inside a function that has a name of its own ended up.
177///
178/// What asks for one is GNU's address of a label in the initializer of an object with static
179/// storage duration. A label is somewhere a jump goes and a jump is a distance the assembler works
180/// out, so no ordinary label is in the symbol table at all. An image is the other case: it is in
181/// another section, so what it holds is a relocation, and a relocation names a symbol.
182///
183/// The name is never one the program wrote, so nothing outside this file looks it up and it is
184/// always local: it is here for a relocation in this same file to resolve against, and a linker
185/// that offered it to another file would be offering the middle of a function.
186#[derive(Debug, Clone, PartialEq, Eq)]
187pub struct Marker {
188 /// The name, which is whatever the compiler minted for it.
189 pub name: String,
190 /// Where it is, as an offset into the same bytes [`Extent::start`] is one into.
191 pub at: usize,
192}
193
194/// Where one function ended up.
195///
196/// How long a function is is a fact ELF records and Mach-O has no way to, so it is handed over
197/// rather than worked out again: the writer that wants it has it and the one that does not
198/// ignores it.
199#[derive(Debug, Clone, PartialEq, Eq)]
200pub struct Extent {
201 /// The function's name, as the C program spelled it. The underscore an Apple symbol carries
202 /// is the object writer's business, not this one's.
203 pub name: String,
204 /// Where its first instruction is.
205 pub start: usize,
206 /// How many bytes of instructions it is, not counting the padding in front of the next one.
207 pub len: usize,
208 /// What this one function asked to be aligned to, which is not always what the section it is
209 /// in was aligned to.
210 ///
211 /// The two are the same number only when this function is the one that asked for the most.
212 /// Under [`Sections::functions`] each function is a section of its own and this is what that
213 /// section is aligned to, so the number has to survive the trip rather than be recovered from
214 /// the offset, which says nothing once the function is at zero in a section of its own.
215 pub align: u32,
216 /// How the linker sees the name, which is what the C `static` reaches the object file as.
217 pub binding: Binding,
218 /// How far outside a shared library holding this the name reaches.
219 pub visibility: Visibility,
220 /// Where the room a patcher was promised is, or `None` in a function promised none, which is
221 /// every function on a command line that did not ask. See [`Patch`].
222 pub patch: Option<Patch>,
223}
224
225/// The variables a file defines, and what the linker has to be told about them.
226///
227/// One entry per variable rather than one section of everything, because where a variable goes is
228/// worked out from what it is and two of them that land in one section still have their own
229/// alignment, their own size and their own symbol. Putting them together is the writer's job and
230/// is the one part of it the three formats disagree about.
231#[derive(Debug, Clone, Default, PartialEq, Eq)]
232pub struct Data {
233 /// Every variable this file defines, in the order the module held them.
234 pub objects: Vec<Object>,
235}
236
237/// A second name for something the same file defines.
238///
239/// Not a section and not a byte of anything, which is the whole point of it: an alias is a symbol
240/// table entry pointing at an address something else already occupies, so a file with one in it is
241/// no larger than the same file without. `.set b, a` is what an assembler is told and a second
242/// entry at the first one's section, value and size is what a writer produces, and the two say the
243/// same thing.
244///
245/// The target is a name rather than an index into anything above, because the two output paths
246/// find it in different places: a listing hands the name to an assembler that resolves it, and a
247/// writer looks it up among the symbols it has already added.
248#[derive(Debug, Clone, PartialEq, Eq)]
249pub struct Alias {
250 /// The name being defined, as the C program spelled it.
251 pub name: String,
252 /// The name it stands for, which has to be something this same file defines.
253 pub target: String,
254 /// How the linker sees the new name, which is not always how it sees the old one: the target
255 /// of `extern int b __attribute__((alias("a")))` may be a `static`.
256 pub binding: Binding,
257 /// How far outside a shared library holding this the new name reaches, which is its own
258 /// answer for the same reason the binding is: the attribute is written on the alias.
259 pub visibility: Visibility,
260}
261
262/// One global variable, laid out.
263#[derive(Debug, Clone, PartialEq, Eq)]
264pub struct Object {
265 /// Its name, as the C program spelled it. The underscore an Apple symbol carries is the
266 /// object writer's business, not this one's.
267 pub name: String,
268 /// Its image, and nothing at all when it is zero filled and the file carries none of it.
269 pub bytes: Vec<u8>,
270 /// How many bytes it occupies, which is the length of the image except when there is none.
271 pub size: u64,
272 /// What it has to be aligned to, always a power of two.
273 pub align: u64,
274 /// Which section it goes in.
275 pub place: Place,
276 /// How the linker sees the name.
277 pub binding: Binding,
278 /// How far outside a shared library holding this the name reaches.
279 pub visibility: Visibility,
280 /// Every place in its image that holds the address of a symbol, counted from the start of
281 /// the image rather than from the start of the section it lands in.
282 pub relocs: Vec<Reloc>,
283}
284
285/// Which section a variable goes in.
286///
287/// Worked out from what the variable is rather than named by it, except in the one case where the
288/// program named it. A reader who wants to know why a variable is in `.rodata` should be able to
289/// find the answer in the variable.
290#[derive(Debug, Clone, PartialEq, Eq)]
291pub enum Place {
292 /// Written to, and its image is not all zeros. `.data`.
293 Written,
294 /// Never written to, so it can go in a page the loader maps read only and every process
295 /// running the program can share. `.rodata`.
296 ReadOnly,
297 /// Never written to by the program, but written once by the dynamic linker, because its image
298 /// holds the address of something and an address is not known until the image is loaded.
299 /// `.data.rel.ro`.
300 ///
301 /// The section has to be writable for that one write and read only afterwards, which is what
302 /// the `PT_GNU_RELRO` segment is: the loader maps it, the relocations are applied, and then it
303 /// is turned read only before the program starts. Putting the variable in `.rodata` instead
304 /// means asking the linker to leave a relocation in a section that is never writable, and what
305 /// it does about that is give the whole image `DT_TEXTREL`, which gives up the protection the
306 /// section was for. Some hardened toolchains refuse the link outright.
307 RelocReadOnly {
308 /// Whether every address in the image is of something this file defines and does not
309 /// export, which means the link can resolve them all and none can be interposed.
310 ///
311 /// Those go in `.data.rel.ro.local`, which the linker puts in the first pages of the
312 /// segment, so the pages holding them are the ones the loader is done with soonest. It is
313 /// a hint about layout rather than a difference in what the section is.
314 local: bool,
315 },
316 /// All zeros, so the file says how big it is and carries none of it. `.bss`.
317 Zero,
318 /// One copy per thread rather than one copy per program. `.tdata` and `.tbss`.
319 ///
320 /// What the loader does with these two sections is what makes them different from every other
321 /// section here. Their contents are the template of a thread's own block of storage rather than
322 /// the storage itself: the image is laid out once, and every thread that starts gets a fresh
323 /// copy of it, so the address of a variable in one of them is a different address in every
324 /// thread and there is no single address for the link to write down. That is why a reference to
325 /// one is not the ordinary distance from the instruction pointer, and why the symbol is marked
326 /// as being of this kind so a linker refuses one that is.
327 ///
328 /// The pair is the same split as `.data` and `.bss` for the same reason, so an image that is
329 /// all zeros costs its size in the file and not its bytes.
330 Thread {
331 /// Whether the image is all zeros, which puts it in `.tbss` rather than `.tdata`.
332 zero: bool,
333 },
334 /// A tentative definition, which is not in a section at all: the linker is asked for that
335 /// much zeroed space and merges every definition of the name into one. `.comm`.
336 Merged,
337 /// The section the program named, from `__attribute__((section(...)))`.
338 Named(String),
339}
340
341impl Place {
342 /// What the section this variable goes in is called under [`Sections::data`], and nothing at
343 /// all for a variable that has no section of its own to be given.
344 ///
345 /// The name is the section it would otherwise have shared with a dot and the variable's name
346 /// after it, which is what gcc writes and is not merely a convention: `--gc-sections`, the
347 /// linker scripts a kernel and an embedded image are linked with, and the default placement
348 /// rules all match on the part in front of the dot, so a section called anything else would be
349 /// placed by whatever the catch all rule is.
350 ///
351 /// Two kinds of variable are left alone. A merged one is a request to the linker for that much
352 /// zeroed space rather than an image, so there is no section to split, and one the program put
353 /// a name on already has the answer the source gave, which this must not overrule.
354 ///
355 /// Here rather than beside either output path, so that the listing `-S` writes and the object
356 /// `-c` writes cannot come to disagree about where a variable went.
357 #[must_use]
358 pub fn split(&self, name: &str) -> Option<String> {
359 Some(format!("{}.{name}", self.base()?))
360 }
361
362 /// The section this variable goes in when nothing is being split up, and nothing at all for
363 /// the two kinds that are not in one.
364 #[must_use]
365 pub fn base(&self) -> Option<&'static str> {
366 Some(match self {
367 Place::Written => ".data",
368 Place::ReadOnly => ".rodata",
369 Place::RelocReadOnly { local: false } => ".data.rel.ro",
370 Place::RelocReadOnly { local: true } => ".data.rel.ro.local",
371 Place::Zero => ".bss",
372 Place::Thread { zero: false } => ".tdata",
373 Place::Thread { zero: true } => ".tbss",
374 Place::Merged | Place::Named(_) => return None,
375 })
376 }
377}
378
379/// A section holding function addresses for a C runtime to call rather than data for the program
380/// to read.
381///
382/// ELF has a type for each of the three, and a section of that type is what the startup code walks:
383/// the linker gathers every input section of the kind into one run and the CRT calls what it finds
384/// between the two ends. A section of the ordinary type with the same name would be gathered the
385/// same way and called by nothing, which is why the type is worth writing down rather than leaving
386/// to the default.
387///
388/// Only ELF says it this way. COFF sorts by what follows the `$` in a section name and Mach-O has
389/// a section attribute for it, so on those two the name carries the whole of the answer and there
390/// is nothing for this to be.
391#[derive(Debug, Clone, Copy, PartialEq, Eq)]
392pub enum Array {
393 /// Run on the way to `main`, in the order the linker sorted the sections into.
394 Init,
395 /// Run after `main` returns, in the reverse of that order.
396 Fini,
397 /// Run ahead of `.init_array` and ahead of the shared libraries a program is linked against,
398 /// which is a thing only the C library itself has a use for.
399 Preinit,
400}
401
402impl Array {
403 /// Which of them a section of this name is, and [`None`] for a name that is not one of them.
404 ///
405 /// The name itself or the name with a dot and a priority after it. A numbered `constructor` is
406 /// written as the second of those and is the same kind of section as the first: the number is
407 /// there so that the linker sorts it, not to make it a different thing.
408 #[must_use]
409 pub fn of(name: &str) -> Option<Array> {
410 let kinds = [
411 (".init_array", Array::Init),
412 (".fini_array", Array::Fini),
413 (".preinit_array", Array::Preinit),
414 ];
415 kinds.into_iter().find_map(|(base, array)| {
416 let rest = name.strip_prefix(base)?;
417 (rest.is_empty() || rest.starts_with('.')).then_some(array)
418 })
419 }
420
421 /// How the type is spelled in a `.section` directive.
422 #[must_use]
423 pub const fn asm(self) -> &'static str {
424 match self {
425 Array::Init => "@init_array",
426 Array::Fini => "@fini_array",
427 Array::Preinit => "@preinit_array",
428 }
429 }
430}
431
432/// How the linker sees a name.
433///
434/// Three of the five linkages the IR has, because that is how many an object file can say. Which
435/// of the two weak ones a symbol had is a fact the optimizer needs and the linker does not.
436#[derive(Debug, Clone, Copy, PartialEq, Eq)]
437pub enum Binding {
438 /// Visible to every other object, and the definition here is the definition.
439 Global,
440 /// Invisible outside this object, which is what `static` at file scope means.
441 Local,
442 /// Visible, and allowed to lose to a definition in another object.
443 Weak,
444}
445
446/// How far outside a shared library a name reaches.
447///
448/// A different question from [`Binding`] and asked of a different linker. The binding is what the
449/// static linker does with a name while it is building the output, and this is what the dynamic
450/// linker may do with it once the output is a shared library and is being loaded. A hidden name is
451/// still global to the static link, so two files in the same library can call each other by it; it
452/// is simply not in the dynamic symbol table afterwards, so nothing outside can name it.
453///
454/// Written down here as its own thing rather than folded into the binding because it is the
455/// mistake tamnd/rucc#733 was: a writer that has one word for both ends up saying something about
456/// visibility while it thinks it is saying something about linkage, and what it said was hidden.
457///
458/// It means nothing for a [`Binding::Local`] name. `static` is already invisible to the whole
459/// world outside the file, and ELF records `STV_DEFAULT` for one, which is what gcc writes.
460#[derive(Debug, Clone, Copy, Default, PartialEq, Eq)]
461pub enum Visibility {
462 /// In the dynamic symbol table, and a reference from inside the library may be satisfied by a
463 /// definition somewhere else, which is what makes `LD_PRELOAD` work. What a name gets when
464 /// nothing said otherwise.
465 #[default]
466 Default,
467 /// Not in the dynamic symbol table at all, so nothing outside the library can name it and
468 /// every reference to it from inside binds here. `__attribute__((visibility("hidden")))`.
469 Hidden,
470 /// In the dynamic symbol table, so something outside can name it, but a reference from inside
471 /// the library binds to the definition inside it and cannot be interposed.
472 Protected,
473}
474
475/// One reference to something this file does not contain.
476#[derive(Debug, Clone, PartialEq, Eq)]
477pub struct Reloc {
478 /// Where the bytes the linker writes over begin.
479 pub at: usize,
480 /// What is wanted, as the C program spelled it.
481 pub symbol: String,
482 /// What the linker is being asked for.
483 pub kind: Reference,
484 /// What to add to the distance, which is the constant the instruction already meant plus the
485 /// bytes between the hole and the end of the instruction, negated. An instruction counts from
486 /// where it ends and a relocation counts from where it starts, and this is the difference.
487 pub addend: i64,
488}
489
490/// What kind of thing a relocation is asking the linker for.
491///
492/// The first three are the distance from the end of an instruction to something, which is what
493/// every reference the code makes is, because this compiler generates position independent code and
494/// nothing else. They are told apart by what the linker is allowed to do about each one. The fourth
495/// is not a distance at all and is the only kind an image asks for, since an initializer holding the
496/// address of something holds the address itself.
497#[derive(Debug, Clone, Copy, PartialEq, Eq)]
498pub enum Reference {
499 /// A call, which the linker may satisfy with a stub that reaches further than the four bytes
500 /// would. `R_X86_64_PLT32` on ELF, and the same relocation a branch gets on the other two.
501 Call,
502 /// A datum, reached from the instruction pointer. `R_X86_64_PC32` on ELF.
503 Data,
504 /// A slot of the global offset table, reached from the instruction pointer, holding the
505 /// address of something another object may be the one that defines.
506 ///
507 /// The distance to the slot rather than to the thing, which is the whole difference: the
508 /// distance to the thing is a number only a link that puts the thing in this program can
509 /// work out, and a shared library is a link that does not. `R_X86_64_REX_GOTPCRELX` on ELF,
510 /// which says the instruction is a `mov` with a REX prefix and lets the linker turn it back
511 /// into the `lea` it would have been if the symbol had been here all along.
512 Got,
513 /// A slot of the global offset table, reached from the instruction pointer, holding how far
514 /// into a thread's own block of storage a thread-local variable sits.
515 ///
516 /// An offset and not an address, which is what makes it a different relocation from the one
517 /// above rather than the same one against a different symbol: a thread-local variable has one
518 /// copy per thread and therefore no address for a link to write down, and what every copy has
519 /// in common is where it sits inside the block. Adding the block's own address, which the
520 /// machine keeps in a segment register, is what turns one into the other, and that addition is
521 /// in the code rather than in the relocation. `R_X86_64_GOTTPOFF` on ELF, which the linker
522 /// turns into a constant in the instruction when it is making an executable and therefore
523 /// knows how the blocks are laid out.
524 Thread,
525 /// The address itself, written into an image. `int *p = &y;` and nothing else in C.
526 Address {
527 /// How many bytes of it are written, which is the pointer width except on a target with
528 /// a narrower relocation for it. `R_X86_64_64` and `R_X86_64_32` on ELF.
529 bytes: u8,
530 },
531}