linux-kernel - Old compiler versions (was Re: v4.10: kernel stack frame pointer .. has bad value (null))

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Message-ID: <20170309104908.GA20923@amd>
Date:   Thu, 9 Mar 2017 11:49:08 +0100
From:   Pavel Machek <pavel@....cz>
To:     Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
Cc:     Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@...hat.com>,
        Andy Lutomirski <luto@...capital.net>,
        kernel list <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>,
        Andrew Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>,
        Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de>,
        Brian Gerst <brgerst@...il.com>,
        Denys Vlasenko <dvlasenk@...hat.com>,
        Peter Anvin <hpa@...or.com>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>
Subject: Old compiler versions (was Re: v4.10: kernel stack frame pointer ..
 has bad value (null))

Hi!

> > > - CONFIG_FUNCTION_GRAPH_TRACER sets it on x86-32 because of a gcc bug
> > >   where the stack gets aligned before the mcount call.  This issue
> > >   should be mostly obsolete as most modern compilers now have -mfentry.
> > >   We could make it dependent on CC_USING_FENTRY.
> > 
> > Yeah. At some point we might even upgrade the compiler requirements to
> > no longer accept the mcount model.
> > 
> > I think the fentry model is gcc-4.6.0 and up. Currently I guess we
> > support gcc-3.2+, which is fairly ridiculous considering that 4.6.0 is
> > from March, 2011. So it's over five years ago already.
> > 
> > gcc-3.2.0 is from 2002, I think. At some point you just have to say
> > "caring about a 15 year old compiler is ridiculous"
> > 
> > The main reason we have fairly aggressively supported old compilers
> > tends to be some odder architectures that don't have good support, so
> > people use various random "this works for me" versions.
> > 
> > We could easily make the gcc version checks much more strict on x86,
> > I suspect.
> 
> Well, I have fast CPUs, but most of the time they just compile
> stuff. Especially bisect is compile-heavy. I suspect going back to
> gcc-3.2 would bring me bigger advantages than CPU upgrade...

Okay, would not it be nice if we supported gcc-3.3? It compiles about
twice the speed of gcc-4.9, across the board: (If we could compile at
-O1, we'd get 4 times the speed. At -O0, we'd be at cca 9 times the
speed; that would be useful for a bisect!)

Good news is that -Os is quite significantly faster than -O2 (and
already supported), so that should be simple way to optimize bisect performance. 

(On thinkpad X220, compiling bzip2)

| mach |      gcc |     |                |   real |   user |   sys |           $
| x220 | 4.9.2-10 | -O0 | bzip2.c caf036 |  0.644 |   0.54 |  0.03 |           $
|      |          | -O1 |                |  1.501 |        |       |           $
|      |          | -O2 |                |  2.607 |        |       |           $
|      |          | -O3 |                |  3.052 |        |       |           $
|      |          | -Os |                |  1.839 |        |       |           $
|      | 3.3.5-13 | -O0 |                |  0.343 |  0.300 | 0.028 |           $
|      |          | -O1 |                |  0.721 |        |       |           $
|      |          | -O2 |                |  1.238 |        |       |           $
|      |          | -O3 |                |  1.598 |  1.508 | 0.032 |           $


Unfortunately, 4.11-rc1 fails to compile on gcc 3.3.5.

> 1. None (CC_STACKPROTECTOR_NONE) (NEW)

is needed. Easy. But then I get

  AS      arch/x86/entry/entry_32.o
  arch/x86/entry/entry_32.S: Assembler messages:
  arch/x86/entry/entry_32.S:440: Error: invalid character '"' in
  operand 1

from the ALTERNATIVE macro. It seems 3.3 just does not like " in macro
arguments.

arch/x86/boot/bioscall.S: Assembler messages:
arch/x86/boot/bioscall.S:68: Error: `68(%esp)' is not a valid 16 bit
base/index expression

Plus I get about milion of

                 from fs/fs-writeback.c:23:
		 include/linux/irq.h:419: warning: parameter has
		 incomplete type
		 include/linux/irq.h:420: warning: parameter has
		 incomplete type
		 
... and problem with builtin_ffs in drm_blend.c, and others with
function alignment in drm.

lzo1x_compress needs __builtin_ctz. In the end, compilation fails with

mm/built-in.o(.text+0x2b714): In function `do_set_pmd':
: undefined reference to `__compiletime_assert_3034'
mm/built-in.o(.text+0x2c09a): In function `create_huge_pmd':
: undefined reference to `do_huge_pmd_anonymous_page'
mm/built-in.o(.text+0x2c0ca): In function `wp_huge_pmd':
: undefined reference to `do_huge_pmd_wp_page'
drivers/built-in.o(.text+0xe5a2b): In function
`cea_mode_alternate_timings':
: undefined reference to `__compiletime_assert_2638'
drivers/built-in.o(.text+0x3c969f): In function `sg_ioctl':
: undefined reference to `__divdi3'

But that looks fixable. But when I force the compilation, it is
actually _slower_ than recent gcc (23 minutes vs. 13
minutes). Interesting. If someone knows what old gcc versions actually
compile recent kernels, I'd like to know.

Best regards,

									Pavel
-- 
(english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek
(cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html

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