From: Ovidiu Predescu <ovidiu@aracnet.com>
To: marcusd@cathcart.sysc.pdx.edu (Marcus G. Daniels)
Cc: Scott Christley <scottc@net-community.com>, egcs@cygnus.com
Subject: Re: GCC/ObjC enhancements, comments requested
Date: Sun, 08 Feb 1998 22:32:00 -0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <199802090632.WAA09654@aracnet.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <rfira5dlsnh.fsf@cathcart.sysc.pdx.edu>
On 08 Feb 1998 12:59:30, marcusd@cathcart.sysc.pdx.edu (Marcus G. Daniels) wrote:
> >>>>> "OP" == Ovidiu Predescu <ovidiu@aracnet.com> writes:
>
> OP> The way I originally saw this runtime construction of a call is to
> OP> make GCC generate this knowledge and implement generic functions
> OP> in a runtime library (libgcc or libobjc) that uses that knowledge
> OP> to build the call.
>
> Hey, if worse came to worst, "gcc -g" generates this knowledge.
> Looks to me like "objdump --debugging" reports everything that's needed.
> Link in GNU BFD and load up them reflection data structures!
What we're trying to build is a system that allows us to build a function
call at _runtime_, knowing the address of the function, the argument types
and the return value. The types would be encoded in a similar way with how
ObjC currently encodes them, in C strings. GCC currently implements only half
of this support with the __builtin_apply() and __builtin_return()
pseudo-functions.
BFD can't help us here because it gives information only on the name of the
functions contained in an object file, the argument types are lost (at least
for C and C++ functions, ObjC does encode the argument and return value types
of each method).
What is needed is a way to access and set the arguments in the frame passed
to __builtin_apply() and the return value respectively in __builtin_return().
The knowledge to do this is definitely contained inside GCC, as it is able
to generate these functions. We need a way to export this knowledge to an
external library like libgcc.
I think this can be done relatively easy by exporting the tables and the
register and mode information used by expand_builtin_apply() and
expand_builtin_return() in expr.c. We can then implement a simple C API that
works with them to access the __builtin_apply frame; the algorithms
implemented would duplicate the ones used by the above functions.
--
Ovidiu Predescu <ovidiu@net-community.com> (NeXTMail, MIME)
http://www.net-community.com/Users/~ovidiu
next prev parent reply other threads:[~1998-02-08 22:32 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 16+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
1998-02-07 18:11 Scott Christley
1998-02-07 22:43 ` Richard Henderson
1998-02-08 10:21 ` Scott Christley
1998-02-10 3:34 ` Richard Henderson
1998-02-10 14:45 ` Anthony Green
1998-02-08 10:27 ` Ovidiu Predescu
1998-02-08 13:12 ` Marcus G. Daniels
1998-02-08 22:32 ` Ovidiu Predescu [this message]
1998-02-09 7:43 ` Bruno Haible
1998-02-09 15:33 ` Ovidiu Predescu
[not found] ` <199802092146.WAA04183@halles.ilog.fr>
1998-02-10 10:58 ` Ovidiu Predescu
1998-02-10 14:45 ` Joern Rennecke
1998-02-09 11:31 ` Marcus G. Daniels
1998-02-10 3:34 ` Richard Henderson
1998-02-10 10:58 ` Ovidiu Predescu
1998-02-09 14:46 ` Anthony Green
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