[PATCH] Add workaround for broken C/C++ wrappers to LAPACK (PR fortran/90329)

[Jerry DeLisle]

On 5/17/19 10:48 AM, Jeff Law wrote:
> On 5/16/19 2:09 AM, Jakub Jelinek wrote:
>> Hi!
>>
>> Fortran subroutines/functions that have CHARACTER arguments have also
>> hidden arguments at the end of the argument list which hold the string
>> length.  This is something all Fortran compilers I've tried do and is
>> done in order to support calling unprototyped subroutines/functions
>> where one can't know if the callee is using character(len=constant)
>> or character(len=*) argument, where for the latter one has to pass
>> the extra argument because there is no other way to propagate that info,
>> while for the former it is kind of redundant but still part of the ABI;
>> the compiler just uses the constant directly instead of asking about the
>> real passed string length.
>>
>> Another thing is that until PR87689 has been fixed, the Fortran FE has been
>> broken, used vararg-ish prototypes in most cases and that prevented (all?)
>> tail call optimizations in the Fortran code.
>>
>> Apparently it is a common case that buggy C/C++ wrappers around the Fortran
>> functions just ignore the ABI and don't pass the hidden string length
>> arguments at all, which seemed to work fine in gfortran until recently
>> (because the arguments weren't used).  When we started making tail calls
>> from such functions, this has of course changed, because when making a tail
>> call we overwrite the caller's argument slots with the arguments we want to
>> pass to the callee.  Not really sure why it seemed to work with other
>> compilers; trying https://fortran.godbolt.org/z/ckMt1t
>> subroutine foo (a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h)
>>    integer :: b, c, d, e, f, g, h
>>    character(len=1) :: a
>>    call bar (a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h)
>> end subroutine foo
>> both older/new gfortran and ifort 19.0.0 emit a tail call which overwrites
>> the hidden string length argument with 1, but when trying the
>> https://fortran.godbolt.org/z/xpsH8e LAPACK routine, ifort for some reason
>> doesn't tail call it.
>>
>> I'm not really happy to provide workarounds for undefined behavior,
>> especially because that will mean it might take longer if ever if those
>> buggy programs are fixed.  On the other side, the PR87689 bug fix has been
>> backported to all release branches and so now not only trunk, but also 9.1,
>> 8.3.1 and 7.4.1 are affected.  Instead of trying to disable all tail calls,
>> this patch disables tail calls from functions/subroutines that have those
>> hidden string length arguments and don't use character(len=*) (in that case
>> the function wouldn't seem to work previously either, because the argument
>> is really used), where those hidden string length arguments are passed
>> on the stack and where the tail callee also would want to pass arguments
>> on the stack (if we spent even more time on this, we could narrow it down
>> further and check if the tail call would actually store anything overlapping
>> the hidden string length arguments on the stack).
>>
>> This workaround probably needs guarding with some Fortran FE specific
>> option, so that it can be disabled, will defer that to the Fortran
>> maintainers.
>>
>> Bootstrapped/regtested on x86_64-linux and i686-linux, ok for trunk and
>> release branches (not sure about LTO on the release branches, does one need
>> to bump anything when changing the LTO format by streaming another bit)?
>>
>> 2019-05-16  Jakub Jelinek  <jakub@redhat.com>
>>
>> 	PR fortran/90329
>> 	* tree-core.h (struct tree_decl_common): Document
>> 	decl_nonshareable_flag for PARM_DECLs.
>> 	* tree.h (DECL_HIDDEN_STRING_LENGTH): Define.
>> 	* calls.c (expand_call): Don't try tail call if caller
>> 	has any DECL_HIDDEN_STRING_LENGTH PARM_DECLs that are or might be
>> 	passed on the stack and callee needs to pass any arguments on the
>> 	stack.
>> 	* tree-streamer-in.c (unpack_ts_decl_common_value_fields): Use
>> 	else if instead of series of mutually exclusive ifs.  Handle
>> 	DECL_HIDDEN_STRING_LENGTH for PARM_DECLs.
>> 	* tree-streamer-out.c (pack_ts_decl_common_value_fields): Likewise.
>>
>> 	* trans-decl.c (create_function_arglist): Set
>> 	DECL_HIDDEN_STRING_LENGTH on hidden string length PARM_DECLs if
>> 	len is constant.
> My first, second and third thought has been we shouldn't be catering to
> code that is so clearly broken.  Maybe we could do this on the release
> branches which would in turn give folks roughly a year to fix up this mess?
> 
> jeff
> 

Not that I have much say, but I have been following this thread and the others 
about broken wrappers and screwed up prototypes being used by R for there use of 
LAPACK.  I have been holding off saying anything.

I don't thing we should be doing anything in gfortran at all. I think the R 
people need to fix their calls. People get caught by not following the proper 
conventions and then want the compiler to fix it. Its not the compiler writers 
job to fix users bad code. The Fortran conventions of having the string lengths 
appended to the end has been known for many many years and well documented 
everywhere.

Sorry for ranting and I understand everyone is just trying to do the right 
thing.  It would have been about an editorial fix on the R side.

Maybe Jeff as a good compromise here in that at least we would not have to carry 
it forward in time.

Jerry