Dear seL4 developers,
first, I'd like to thank you for publishing seL4 under GPL. I am very
happy that I can finally get my hands dirty with working with the kernel
of your group. :-) Currently, I am taking the first baby steps to bring
the Genode OS framework (http://genode.org) to seL4. For reference, I am
using the experimental branch.
The first smallish issue I stumbled upon stems from the fact that Genode
is written in C++. By compiling the seL4 syscall bindings with a C++
compiler, I got the following error:
error: inconsistent operand constraints in an ‘asm’
It can be reproduced by putting the following code snippet into a cc
file and compiling it with 'g++ -m32 -c' (tested with the Genode tool
chain as well as with GCC 4.8.1):
typedef enum {
seL4_SysDebugPutChar = -9,
_enum_pad_seL4_Syscall_ID = (1U << ((sizeof(int)*8) - 1))
} seL4_Syscall_ID;
void
seL4_DebugPutChar(char c)
{
asm volatile (
"pushl %%ebp \n"
"movl %%esp, %%ecx \n"
"leal 1f, %%edx \n"
"1: \n"
"sysenter \n"
"popl %%ebp \n"
:
: "a" (seL4_SysDebugPutChar),
"b" (c)
: "%ecx", "%edx", "%esi", "%edi", "memory"
);
}
When compiling the same code snippet with 'gcc' instead of 'g++',
everything is fine. It turns out that the C++ compiler does not like the
enum value to be specified as input argument. I found the following ways
to circumvent this problem:
* Changing the enum value 'SysDebugPutChar' to a positive value,
* Removing the definition of '_enum_pad_seL4_Syscall_ID',
* Casting 'seL4_SysDebugPutChar' to an integer:
: "a" ((int)seL4_SysDebugPutChar),
In any case, I seem to have to change the bindings. Do you see a way
around it? If not, would you consider one of the solutions above for the
seL4 headers?
On another note, I noticed that the bindings use the EBX register.
Unfortunately, this makes it impossible to compile seL4 userland
software as position-independent code (PIC). E.g., when compiling the
above code snippet via 'g++ -m32 -fPIC -c', the following error occurs:
error: inconsistent operand constraints in an ‘asm’
However, PIC is required in order to use shared libraries. The solution
would be to not use EBX to pass arguments to the 'asm' statements, save
EBX on the stack prior moving the respective kernel argument to the
register, and, of course, restoring it after sysenter returns.
Before I start changing the bindings, I'd like to know: is there anyone
else working on the same problem? Would you be open to accept a change
of the bindings to become PIC compliant on the costs of a few added
instructions? Or do you have another suggestion how I should go about it?
Best regards
Norman
--
Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske
Genode Labs
http://www.genode-labs.com · http://genode.org
Genode Labs GmbH · Amtsgericht Dresden · HRB 28424 · Sitz Dresden
Geschäftsführer: Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske, Christian Helmuth
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