Hello,

I need some help understanding what might be wrong with a piece of code from the 
openvswitch project. By ${subject} I'm not suggesting there's a problem in gcc, 
clang also shows the same behavior so it's likely our code is broken. I am 
kindly asking for help to understand/troubleshoot the problem.

Summary: It seems that certain interaction between two main openvswitch data 
structures, when optimized ("-O2 -flto=auto") is broken.
The two data structures are:

hmap: https://github.com/openvswitch/ovs/blob/master/include/openvswitch/hmap.h
list: https://github.com/openvswitch/ovs/blob/master/include/openvswitch/list.h

I've reproduced the problem outside of openvswitch daemon using a short C 
program (attached)

Code snippet:

struct bond {
     struct hmap members;
};

struct member {
     struct hmap_node hmap_node;
     int order;
     struct ovs_list elem;
};

int main() {
     int ret = 0;
     struct member *member, *member1, *member2;
     struct bond *bond;
     struct ovs_list start = {0};

     bond = malloc(sizeof *bond);
     memset(bond, 0, sizeof (struct bond));
     hmap_init(&bond->members);

     member1 = malloc(sizeof *member1);
     member2 = malloc(sizeof *member2);
     memset(member1, 0, sizeof (struct member));
     memset(member2, 0, sizeof (struct member));

     member1->order = 3;
     member2->order = 2;

     hmap_insert(&bond->members, &member1->hmap_node, (uint32_t)(uintptr_t)member1);
     hmap_insert(&bond->members, &member2->hmap_node, (uint32_t)(uintptr_t)member2);

     ovs_list_init(&start);
     HMAP_FOR_EACH (member, hmap_node, &bond->members) {
        /*
         * Insert member in start (sorted)
         * */
        struct member *pos;
        LIST_FOR_EACH (pos, elem, &start) {
            if (member->order > pos->order) {
                break;
            }
        }
        // TESTED: If I add this printf, the problem disappears
        //printf("Inserting member: %p\n", member);
        ovs_list_insert(&pos->elem, &member->elem);
     }

     /* I've inserted two members into the 'start' list.
      *   first and last have to be either member1 or member2
      * */
     if ((first != member1 && first != member2) || (last != member1 && last != 
member2)) {
         printf("list is broken!\n");
     }

}


What I know for now:
* -fno-strict-aliasing does not fix it
* Only happens with "-O2 -flto=auto"
* If I define 'ovs_list *start' and change the code to use the pointer directly 
and not '&start' the problem disappears. It seems that the LIST_FOR_EACH macros 
prefer an lvalue rather than "&" but I don't get why.
* I'm not able to reproduce without using hmap _and_ ovs_list.
* If I add a compiler barrier (or a call to an external function) after the 
loop, the problem disappears (e.g printf), the problem disappears.

I'd really appreciate any hint or idea to try to understand this problem.

Thanks in advanced.
-- 
Adrián Moreno