So the dwarf2 annotations in low level assembly code have
become an increasing hindrance: unreadable, messy macros
mixed into some of the most security sensitive code paths
of the Linux kernel.
These debug info annotations don't even buy the upstream
kernel anything: dwarf driven stack unwinding has caused
problems in the past so it's out of tree, and the upstream
kernel only uses the much more robust framepointers based
stack unwinding method.
In addition to that there's a steady, slow bitrot going
on with these annotations, requiring frequent fixups.
There's no tooling and no functionality upstream that
keeps it correct.
So burn down the sick forest, allowing new, healthier growth:
27 files changed, 350 insertions(+), 1101 deletions(-)
Someone who has the willingness and time to do this
properly can attempt to reintroduce dwarf debuginfo in x86
assembly code plus dwarf unwinding from first principles,
with the following conditions:
- it should be maximally readable, and maximally low-key to
'ordinary' code reading and maintenance.
- find a build time method to insert dwarf annotations
automatically in the most common cases, for pop/push
instructions that manipulate the stack pointer. This could
be done for example via a preprocessing step that just
looks for common patterns - plus special annotations for
the few cases where we want to depart from the default.
We have hundreds of CFI annotations, so automating most of
that makes sense.
- it should come with build tooling checks that ensure that
CFI annotations are sensible. We've seen such efforts from
the framepointer side, and there's no reason it couldn't be
done on the dwarf side.
Cc: Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>
Cc: Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>
Cc: Brian Gerst <brgerst@gmail.com>
Cc: Denys Vlasenko <dvlasenk@redhat.com>
Cc: Frédéric Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com
Cc: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com>
Cc: Jan Beulich <JBeulich@suse.com>
Cc: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
131484c8da