[lldb][Expression] Printing union with self-referencing member field crashes lldb

[Michael137]

//struct Attrs // << this works                 
union Attrs // << this crashes                  
{                                                                  
    static const Attrs regular;                 
};                                                                 

const Attrs Attrs::regular{};

int main() {                                                       
    Attrs d;                                    
    return 0;                                                      
}                                                                  

clang++ main.cpp -g -O0 -std=c++2a
./bin/lldb a.out -o "br se -p return -X main" -o run -o "frame var d"

(on llvm.org lldb build at commit 0bfaed8c612705cfa8c5382d26d8089a0a26386b)

This will infinitely recurse in ASTContext::getASTRecordLayout. Possibly the same crash as:

• https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/issues/43604
• https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/issues/63667
• https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/issues/64628
• https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/issues/66335

[llvmbot]

@llvm/issue-subscribers-lldb

``` //struct DependentDylibAttributes // << this works union DependentDylibAttributes // << this crashes { static const DependentDylibAttributes regular; }; const DependentDylibAttributes DependentDylibAttributes::regular{}; int main() { DependentDylibAttributes d; return 0; } ``` ``` clang++ dyld.cpp -g -O0 -std=c++2a ./bin/lldb a.out -o "br se -p return -X main" -o run -o "frame var d" ``` (on llvm.org lldb build at commit `0bfaed8c612705cfa8c5382d26d8089a0a26386b`) This will infinitely recurse in `ASTContext::getASTRecordLayout`. Possibly the same crash as: * https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/issues/43604 * https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/issues/63667 * https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/issues/64628 * https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/issues/66335

[Michael137]

Oh looks like for unions we're mistakenly adding an unnamed padding FieldDecl in DWARFASTParserClang::ParseSingleMember. This confuses the RecordLayoutBuilder because the Attrs type now claims to have a FieldDecl when it actually doesn't; regular should be a VarDecl (at least that's what it is when dumping the actual clang AST of this file).

[Michael137]

// Handle static members, which is any member that doesn't have a bit or a  
// byte member offset.                                                      
if (attrs.member_byte_offset == UINT32_MAX &&                               
    attrs.data_bit_offset == UINT64_MAX) {                                  
  Type *var_type = die.ResolveTypeUID(die: attrs.encoding_form.Reference());

This is what we do for structures that have static members. But this doesn't happen for unions.

Because of this:

MemberAttributes::MemberAttributes(const DWARFDIE &die,                         
                                   const DWARFDIE &parent_die,                  
                                   ModuleSP module_sp) {                        
  member_byte_offset = (parent_die.Tag() == DW_TAG_union_type) ? 0 : UINT32_MAX;

[Michael137]

That logic was added in: https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/commit/aaae5f87af8945cdeac81e86429a303954473a88

[DWARFASTParserClang] Start with member offset of 0 for members of union types.

Summary:
GCC does not emit DW_AT_data_member_location for members of a union.
Starting with a 0 value for member locations helps is reading union types
in such cases.

[Michael137]

So it looks like the change in https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/commit/aaae5f87af8945cdeac81e86429a303954473a88 directly conflicts with the change in https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/issues/55040.

The latter makes it so we always check the presence of member_byte_offset to determine whether we have a static data member. Whereas the former unconditionally adds a non-sentinel default member_byte_offset to all union data members (regardless of whether they're static or not).

The effect of this is that LLDB never correctly detects that a union has static data members.

From both commit descriptions it sounds like both changes were done to support GCC (it neither emits a DW_AT_data_member_location for union members, nor does it emit DW_AT_external in some cases for static data members, e.g., in anonymous namespaces).

AFAICT, the change in https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/commit/aaae5f87af8945cdeac81e86429a303954473a88 is only necessary so that we stop claiming non-static data members are static for GCC-built binaries.

I see that DW_AT_declaration gets attached to non-static data members in both gcc and clang (and regardless of anonymous namespace). Could we use that as a heuristic? Then the solution could be as simple as:

diff --git a/lldb/source/Plugins/SymbolFile/DWARF/DWARFASTParserClang.cpp b/lldb/source/Plugins/SymbolFile/DWARF/DWARFASTParserClang.cpp
index aa45076bf2f7..8aaae7772df2 100644
--- a/lldb/source/Plugins/SymbolFile/DWARF/DWARFASTParserClang.cpp
+++ b/lldb/source/Plugins/SymbolFile/DWARF/DWARFASTParserClang.cpp
@@ -6,6 +6,7 @@
 //
 //===----------------------------------------------------------------------===//

+#include <climits>
 #include <cstdlib>

 #include "DWARFASTParser.h"
@@ -2494,8 +2495,9 @@ struct MemberAttributes {
   DWARFFormValue encoding_form;
   /// Indicates the byte offset of the word from the base address of the
   /// structure.
-  uint32_t member_byte_offset;
+  uint32_t member_byte_offset = UINT32_MAX;
   bool is_artificial = false;
+  bool is_declaration = false;
 };

 /// Parsed form of all attributes that are relevant for parsing Objective-C
@@ -2668,8 +2670,6 @@ DiscriminantValue &VariantPart::discriminant() { return this->_discriminant; }
 MemberAttributes::MemberAttributes(const DWARFDIE &die,
                                    const DWARFDIE &parent_die,
                                    ModuleSP module_sp) {
-  member_byte_offset = (parent_die.Tag() == DW_TAG_union_type) ? 0 : UINT32_MAX;
-
   DWARFAttributes attributes = die.GetAttributes();
   for (size_t i = 0; i < attributes.Size(); ++i) {
     const dw_attr_t attr = attributes.AttributeAtIndex(i);
@@ -2697,6 +2697,9 @@ MemberAttributes::MemberAttributes(const DWARFDIE &die,
       case DW_AT_data_bit_offset:
         data_bit_offset = form_value.Unsigned();
         break;
+      case DW_AT_declaration:
+        is_declaration = form_value.Boolean();
+        break;
       case DW_AT_data_member_location:
         if (form_value.BlockData()) {
           Value initialValue(0);
@@ -2935,10 +2938,11 @@ void DWARFASTParserClang::ParseSingleMember(
   if (class_is_objc_object_or_interface)
     attrs.accessibility = eAccessNone;

-  // Handle static members, which is any member that doesn't have a bit or a
-  // byte member offset.
-  if (attrs.member_byte_offset == UINT32_MAX &&
-      attrs.data_bit_offset == UINT64_MAX) {
+  // Handle static members, which is any member that's a non-defining declaration.
+  // GCC never emits a DW_AT_data_member_location for members of a union, so
+  // we can't use it as a heuristic to determine whether a data member is static
+  // or not.
+  if (attrs.is_declaration) {
     Type *var_type = die.ResolveTypeUID(attrs.encoding_form.Reference());

@clayborg @jingham Any preference on what to do here? Looks like GCC still isn't attaching DW_AT_data_member_location to non-static union members (whereas clang does).

CC @dwblaikie @adrian-prantl @labath because DWARF

[Michael137]

As an aside, do we need to emit the DW_AT_data_member_location for union members in clang at all? If they are all going to be 0 anyway?

[Michael137]

Hmmm looks like DWARFv5 says we should emit static data members as DW_TAG_variable instead of DW_TAG_member?

5.7.7 Class Variable Entries A class variable (“static data member” in C++) is a variable shared by all instances of a class. It is represented by a debugging information entry with the tag DW_TAG_variable.

That would make it much easier to differentiate static vs non-static members. Don't think clang does this yet (gcc does)

[Michael137]

So to summarise:

1. Could we use DW_AT_declaration instead of DW_AT_external/DW_AT_member_location as a heuristic for whether a member is a static? This would avoid the anonymous namespace problem with GCC. If so, then we can also stop doing the default-initialisation of the member_byte_offset
2. Should clang emit DW_TAG_variable for static data members in DWARFv5 and make LLDB understand this?
3. Should clang emit the DW_AT_data_member_location for union members at all if they are all going to be 0 anyway? I guess the space savings of this wouldn't warrant the complexity for consumers, although that would align with what gcc is doing

[adrian-prantl]

Should clang emit DW_TAG_variable for static data members in DWARFv5 and make LLDB understand this?

If the spec says so, I think that's an easy yes. You might need to make the behavior adjustable for some debugger tunings (though I'd argue the default should emit standards-conformant DWARF).

[adrian-prantl]

CC @dwblaikie

[dwblaikie]

Summary is, if I'm reading this right:

• LLDB used to detect static members by the presence of DW_AT_external, but that's not correct/portable, you could have non-external static members if they were members of a non-linkage class, such as a class in an anonymous namespace
• LLDB then started using the presence of DW_AT_data_member_offset to differentiate static and non-static member variables
• LLDB also started assuming members of a union have a DW_AT_data_member_offset of zero, because GCC emits union non-static members without a DW_AT_data_member_offset (since they'd all be zero anyway) - unclear if that's to-spec or not? shrug
• That broke static-member detection inside unions because all the members got an implicit DW_AT_data_member_offset

So we're discussing changing teh way clang emits static members to use DW_TAG_variable instead of DW_TAG_member to make it less ambiguous/solve the above issues "once and for all" fingers crossed

And you've tagged me as a heads up that we might be/are going to go in this direction/check I'm cool with it - yeah, sounds good to me. Doing things more clearly, and if that happens to be "more like GCC" I'm generally for it - they're still the bigger fish in the DWARF sea, and it's usually a safe direction to head unless there's extenuating circumstances.

At least our internal use ships pretty close to LLDB, so we don't have a particular need for some clang mode that's deeply backwards compatible (the inverse is somewhat true - be good if LLDB didn't just totally give up on doing some of the old heuristics - still able to debug old binaries as best it can, which seems like it wouldn't be too expensive/problematic to maintain for a while at least) & this shouldn't present a GDB compatibility issue, since it'll be closer to what GCC produces anyway.

[Michael137]

Summary is, if I'm reading this right:

• LLDB used to detect static members by the presence of DW_AT_external, but that's not correct/portable, you could have non-external static members if they were members of a non-linkage class, such as a class in an anonymous namespace
• LLDB then started using the presence of DW_AT_data_member_offset to differentiate static and non-static member variables
• LLDB also started assuming members of a union have a DW_AT_data_member_offset of zero, because GCC emits union non-static members without a DW_AT_data_member_offset (since they'd all be zero anyway) - unclear if that's to-spec or not? shrug
• That broke static-member detection inside unions because all the members got an implicit DW_AT_data_member_offset

So we're discussing changing teh way clang emits static members to use DW_TAG_variable instead of DW_TAG_member to make it less ambiguous/solve the above issues "once and for all" fingers crossed

And you've tagged me as a heads up that we might be/are going to go in this direction/check I'm cool with it - yeah, sounds good to me. Doing things more clearly, and if that happens to be "more like GCC" I'm generally for it - they're still the bigger fish in the DWARF sea, and it's usually a safe direction to head unless there's extenuating circumstances.

At least our internal use ships pretty close to LLDB, so we don't have a particular need for some clang mode that's deeply backwards compatible (the inverse is somewhat true - be good if LLDB didn't just totally give up on doing some of the old heuristics - still able to debug old binaries as best it can, which seems like it wouldn't be too expensive/problematic to maintain for a while at least) & this shouldn't present a GDB compatibility issue, since it'll be closer to what GCC produces anyway.

Yup! those are exactly the issues

Alright sounds like we'll resolve this by simply implementing the DWARFv5 "DW_TAG_variable for static data members" feature. LLDB should mostly work out of the box with that.

To avoid crashing on older DWARF i think we could add a best effort attempt to detect the cases where we might have a static data member in a union and do the right thing. E.g., by adding back the check for DW_AT_external. These two solutions won't conflict with each other.

[Michael137]

Proposed solution to handle pre-DWARFv5 here: https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/pull/68300