Re: Fortran LTO and array descriptors.

[Richard Biener <rguenther@suse.de>]

On Sat, 3 Feb 2018, Jakub Jelinek wrote:

> On Sat, Feb 03, 2018 at 06:09:41PM +0100, Thomas Koenig wrote:
> > I have been looking at PR 68649 and 68717. They are the
> > same bug, really (and there are quite a few more).
> > 
> > Jakub has written a good analysis of the problem at
> > https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=68649#c12 .
> > 
> > To sum it up, we create different types for each rank of
> > array, and then call the library. When we call the
> > same function with different ranks, lto complains, with
> > good reason.
> > 
> > The last comment, by Richard, ends with the rather
> > pessimistic "Thus even the proposed fix won't end up working."
> > 
> > This problem prevents users from a lot of LTO use cases. It also
> > prevents us from using LTO with the library (although I
> > strongly suspect that there are also other stumbling blocks).
> > 
> > So, what to do?  On the libfortran side, I tried out the patch
> 
> Trying Richi's testcase with real flexible array member doesn't help:
> struct Xflex
> {
>   int n;
>   int a[];
> };
> struct Xspecific
> {
>   int n;
>   int a[7];
> } x;
> 
> int
> foo (struct Xflex *f)
> {
>   f->a[6] = 2;
>   x.a[6] = 1;
>   return f->a[6];
> }
> 
> still returns 2 at -O2.  What seems to work is:
> struct Xflex
> {
>   int n;
>   int a[];
> };
> union Uspecific
> {
> struct Xflex flex;
> struct Xspecific
> {
>   int n;
>   int a[7];
> } specific;
> } x;
> 
> int
> foo (struct Xflex *f)
> {
>   f->a[6] = 2;
>   x.specific.a[6] = 1;
>   return f->a[6];
> }
> 
> i.e. have a generic struct with flexible array member, which is what e.g.
> the libgfortran APIs take as arguments, and when you actually need an object
> on the stack or static object, make it a union of that generic struct with
> flexible array member and the struct specific for how big rank you want.
> 
> I can try to implement that next week if that's what we agree on.

Note given you control what IL is presented to GCC in the Fortran FE
you don't need to jump through hoops using a union -- you can
rely on the middle-end behavior and simply emit code as if you'd
write in C:

 ((struct Xflex *)&x)->a[6] = 1;

or in GENERIC terms you wrap the Xspecific objects in
a MEM_REF with operand 1 being build_int_cst (pointer_to_Xflex_type_node, 
0) which tells GCC to use the alias-set of Xflex.

So wherever you build "decls" of one of the array-descriptor types
(or embed them into a struct!) when you access the descriptor
use the trailing-array variant.

I think I've seen all array descriptor accesses code-generation
abstracted away in some helper routines.

Richard.