Re: [PATCH, MIPS] Relax alignment check for LDPC

[Richard Sandiford <rdsandiford at googlemail dot com>]

Matthew Fortune <Matthew.Fortune@imgtec.com> writes:
> The R6 LDPC instruction requires an 8-byte aligned load address but
> does not require LDPC itself to be 8-byte aligned. Unfortunately the
> tests for LPDC were aligning the LDPC instruction so did not catch
> this issue.
>
> The alignment check for BFD_RELOC_MIPS_18_PCREL_S3 was incorrectly
> using the valP value as the target address of the reloc when it is
> actually the calculated value to be patched into an instruction.
> Since BFD_RELOC_MIPS_18_PCREL_S3 is recorded as relative to the
> current PC rather than PC & ~7 then valP can end up as a multiple
> of 4 rather than 8 even if the target address is correctly 8-byte
> aligned.  Instead of recalculating the true target address from
> the fixup I just check that valP is a 4-byte multiple leaving the
> linker to do the accurate check as it could end up misaligning the
> target anyway.
> [...]
> diff --git a/gas/config/tc-mips.c b/gas/config/tc-mips.c
> index c9266db..3adebf4 100644
> --- a/gas/config/tc-mips.c
> +++ b/gas/config/tc-mips.c
> @@ -15009,7 +15009,11 @@ md_apply_fix (fixS *fixP, valueT *valP, segT seg ATTRIBUTE_UNUSED)
>        break;
>  
>      case BFD_RELOC_MIPS_18_PCREL_S3:
> -      if ((*valP & 0x7) != 0)
> +      /* There is little point checking for a correctly aligned destination
> +	 for R_MIPS_PC18_S3 as only the linker will know for sure if the
> +	 destination address ends up 8-byte aligned or not.  Check for a
> +	 minimum of 4-byte alignment instead.  */
> +      if ((*valP & 0x3) != 0)
>  	as_bad_where (fixP->fx_file, fixP->fx_line,
>  		      _("PC-relative access to misaligned address (%lx)"),
>  		      (long) *valP);

It seems a bit dangerous to drop a bit on the floor though (which I assume
we'd end up doing for REL).  Also, in practice, the relocation is only safe
if the target has 8-byte alignment at assembly time.  I.e. the section that
the target is in should have at least 8 bytes alignment and the symbol
itself should have an offset that's divisible by 8.

So I think we should either check S_GET_VALUE (fx_addsy) + fx_offset
is aligned or (probably better, if it works) check that the low 3 bits
of *valP are the same as the low three bits of:

    fixP->fx_where + fixP->fx_frag->fr_address

Thanks,
Richard