Gotchas when using linker sections to arrange data, part 1

Raymond Chen

We saw last time that you can use linker sections to arrange the order in which data appears in the module. We ended with a diagram like this:

mydata$a firstInitializer main.obj  
mydata$g DoThisSooner3 file3.obj unspecified
order
DoThisSooner4 file4.obj  
mydata$m Function2 file2.obj unspecified
order
Function1 file1.obj
Function3 file3.obj
mydata$t DoThisLater2 file2.obj unspecified
order
DoThisLater4 file4.obj
mydata$z lastInitializer main.obj

Based on this table, we would be tempted to write code like this:

// Code in italics is wrong.
void NaiveInitializeAllTheThings()
{
    const INITIALIZER* initializer = &firstInitializer + 1;
    while (initializer < &lastInitializer) {
      (*initializer++)();
    }
}

From a language lawyer standpoint, this code is not valid because it dereferences a pointer beyond the end of an object, and because it compares two pointers which are not part of the same aggregate. We can fix this by switching to uintptr_t as our currency.

// Code in italics is still wrong.
void LessNaiveInitializeAllTheThings()
{
    auto begin = (uintptr_t)&firstInitializer
                 + sizeof(firstInitializer);
    auto end = (uintptr_t)&lastInitializer;
    for (auto current = begin; current < end;
         current += sizeof(INITIALIZER)) {
      auto initializer = *(const INITIALIZER*)current;
      initializer();
    }
}

The conversion between pointers and uintptr_t is implementation-defined (rather than undefined), so this avoids the undefined behavior problems of using pointers to walk between two global variables.

But the code is still not right, because it fails to take into account another detail of linker sections: intra-section padding.

The linker will add padding after a fragment in order to satisfy any alignment requirements of the subsequent fragment. That’s expected.

What most people aren’t aware of is that the linker is permitted but not required to add padding after each fragment, up to the section’s alignment. In practice, you are likely to see this “unnecessary” padding when using incremental linking.

In all cases, the padding bytes (if any) will be zero.

mydata$a firstInitializer main.obj  
Optional padding  
mydata$g DoThisSooner3 file3.obj unspecified
order
Optional padding  
DoThisSooner4 file4.obj  
Optional padding  
mydata$m Function2 file2.obj unspecified
order
Optional padding  
Function1 file1.obj
Optional padding  
Function3 file3.obj
Optional padding  
mydata$t DoThisLater2 file2.obj unspecified
order
Optional padding  
DoThisLater4 file4.obj
Optional padding  
mydata$z lastInitializer main.obj
Optional padding  

To accommodate padding, we need to skip over any possible null pointers.

void InitializeAllTheThings()
{
    auto begin = (uintptr_t)&firstInitializer
                 + sizeof(firstInitializer);
    auto end = (uintptr_t)&lastInitializer;
    for (auto current = begin; current < end;
         current += sizeof(INITIALIZER)) {
      auto initializer = *(const INITIALIZER*)current;
      if (initializer) initializer();
    }
}

We’ll look at another consequence of padding next time.

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