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Reliable and fast DWARF-based stack unwinding

Authors:

Théophile Bastian,

Francesco Zappa NardelliAuthors Info & Claims

Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages, Volume 3, Issue OOPSLA

Article No.: 146, Pages 1 - 24

https://doi.org/10.1145/3360572

Published: 10 October 2019 Publication History

Abstract

Debug information, usually encoded in the DWARF format, is a hidden and obscure component of our computing infrastructure. Debug information is obviously used by debuggers, but it also plays a key role in program analysis tools, and, most surprisingly, it can be relied upon by the runtime of high-level programming languages. For instance the C++ runtime leverages DWARF stack unwind tables to implement exceptions! Alas, generating debug information adds significant burden to compiler implementations, and the debug information itself can be pervaded by subtle bugs, making the whole infrastructure unreliable. Additionally, interpreting the debug tables is a time-consuming task and, for some applications as sampling profilers, it turns out to be a performance bottleneck.

In this paper we focus on the DWARF .eh_frame table, that enables stack unwinding in absence of frame-pointers. We will describe two techniques to perform validation and synthesis of the DWARF stack unwinding tables, and their implementation for the x86_64 architecture. The validation tool has proven effective for compiler and inline assembly testing, while the synthesis tool can generate DWARF unwind tables for arbitrary binaries lacking debug information. Additionally, we report on a technique to precompile unwind tables into native x86_64 code, which we have implemented and integrated into libunwind, resulting in 11x-25x DWARF-based unwind speedups.

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Cited By

Kell SStinnett JEdwards JTaeumel M(2024)Source-Level Debugging of Compiler-Optimised Code: Ill-Posed, but Not ImpossibleProceedings of the 2024 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software10.1145/3689492.3690047(38-53)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3689492.3690047
Zhou KAnderson JMeng XMellor-Crummey JRauchwerger LCameron KNikolopoulos DPnevmatikatos D(2022)Low overhead and context sensitive profiling of GPU-accelerated applicationsProceedings of the 36th ACM International Conference on Supercomputing10.1145/3524059.3532388(1-13)Online publication date: 28-Jun-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3524059.3532388
Deshpande CGens DFranz MCarlini NDemontis AChen Y(2021)StackBERTProceedings of the 14th ACM Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Security10.1145/3474369.3486865(85-95)Online publication date: 15-Nov-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3474369.3486865
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Reliable and fast DWARF-based stack unwinding
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software verification and validation
      1. Software defect analysis
        Software testing and debugging
  2. Software notations and tools
    1. Compilers

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cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages

Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages Volume 3, Issue OOPSLA

October 2019

2077 pages

EISSN:2475-1421

DOI:10.1145/3366395

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2019 Owner/Author.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 10 October 2019

Published in PACMPL Volume 3, Issue OOPSLA

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Cited By

Kell SStinnett JEdwards JTaeumel M(2024)Source-Level Debugging of Compiler-Optimised Code: Ill-Posed, but Not ImpossibleProceedings of the 2024 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software10.1145/3689492.3690047(38-53)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3689492.3690047
Zhou KAnderson JMeng XMellor-Crummey JRauchwerger LCameron KNikolopoulos DPnevmatikatos D(2022)Low overhead and context sensitive profiling of GPU-accelerated applicationsProceedings of the 36th ACM International Conference on Supercomputing10.1145/3524059.3532388(1-13)Online publication date: 28-Jun-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3524059.3532388
Deshpande CGens DFranz MCarlini NDemontis AChen Y(2021)StackBERTProceedings of the 14th ACM Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Security10.1145/3474369.3486865(85-95)Online publication date: 15-Nov-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3474369.3486865
Sivaramakrishnan KDolan SWhite LKelly TJaffer SMadhavapeddy AFreund SYahav E(2021)Retrofitting effect handlers onto OCamlProceedings of the 42nd ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation10.1145/3453483.3454039(206-221)Online publication date: 19-Jun-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3453483.3454039
Meng XLiu WSherwood TBerger EKozyrakis C(2021)Incremental CFG patching for binary rewritingProceedings of the 26th ACM International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems10.1145/3445814.3446765(1020-1033)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3445814.3446765

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