Re: arm-elf-gcc : change default data alignement depending on ARM/THUMB

[Bill Gatliff <bgat at billgatliff dot com>]

Vincent:


> It indeed seems that ARM ADS 1.2 aligns on halfwords (16 bits) when in 
> THUMB mode (along with much more sophisticated rules). GCC different 
> behavior causes much more padding to be inserted in structs members 
> and, as the project I work on uses HW mapped registers, application 
> crashes.
> For now, I worked around that using a compile time define to enable 
> the __attribute((packed))__ on the struct(s). I would nevertheless 
> like to know whether there is another solution. 


Avoid using structures for hardware i/o.  Seriously.

There are only minimal guarantees in ANSI regarding structure layout, 
not nearly enough to make them good for associating reliably with 
hardware.  As you've seen, structure implementations can change in 
response to changes in compiler settings and versions--- but the 
hardware doesn't!

The "packed" attribute helps a lot, but really only provides a 
suggestion to the compiler--- and hence, the compiler is free to ignore 
you if it wants to.  Alas, C doesn't provide a bulletproof way to do 
hardware i/o with an abstract data type.

This is all especially the case with bitmapped fields.  DON'T do 
bitmapped fields for hardware i/o, especially in cases where the 
register has "reserved, set to zero" bits!

Here's an example of why.  I was working some time ago on a DMA 
controller inside the Hitachi SH7045 (or maybe it was one of the other 
peripherals, I can't really remember now).  Anyway, a particular control 
register had some reserved bits in them, and the datasheet clearly 
stated that you _had_ to write zeros to those bits any time you touched 
the register.

Well, I thought I was being clever, and came up with a data structure 
that looked something like this (from memory):

  typedef struct {
  ...
     unsigned int rq1f3: 1;
     unsigned int reserved: 29;
     unsigned int r1f4: 2;
  ...
  } the_register_s;

This structure allows you to set the rq1f3 and r1f4 bits, but doesn't 
tell the compiler anything about the reserved bits.  As a result, when I 
did this:

  the_register_s *r = (the_register_s*)THE_REGISTER_ADDRESS;
  r->rq1f3 = 1;
  r->r1f4 = 2;

When I looked at the assembly code, I found that the compiler was doing 
basically this:

 *r |= 0x80000000;
 *r |= 0x00000002;

Which appears to be exactly what I was asking for.

BUT, see the problem?  I didn't either--- at first.  The reserved bits 
in this register sometimes read back nonzero data, and that data gets 
written back to the register due to the read-modify-write operation 
implemented by the compiler.  In violation of the instructions in the 
datasheet.  Net result was the CPU going into undocumented test modes 
that made it do strange things, including locking up at unpredictable 
times thereafter.

ANY time I've tried to be clever with data structures for hardware i/o, 
I've lived to regret it.

Oh, and I left the "volatile" keyword out of all of the above, but you 
absolutely, positively need it as well when you're touching hardware.  
If you don't believe me, turn on -O2 and see what happens.  :^)  Where 
the keyword goes in the above example is an exercise left to the 
reader.  :^)


Regards,


b.g.
--
Bill Gatliff
Embedded systems training and consulting
bgat@billgatliff.com



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