unofficial mirror of emacs-devel@gnu.org 
 help / color / mirror / code / Atom feed
From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@IRO.UMontreal.CA>
Subject: Alignment of Lisp_Subr
Date: 12 Nov 2003 11:22:33 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <jwv8ymld1jm.fsf-monnier+emacs/devel@vor.iro.umontreal.ca> (raw)


So I have finally gotten around to move my tags from the top 3 to the
bottom 3 bits of a Lisp_Object so that Lisp_Objects can now be allocated
anywhere.

Here are the problems I'm facing (all of them due to the new constraint
that objects need to be aligned on 8 byte boundaries) and I'm wondering what
is the best solution for them:

- Lisp_Misc has currently a size that is not a multiple of 8.
  I solved that by adding some padding with

   /* A miscellaneous object, when it's on the free list.  */
   struct Lisp_Free
     {
       int type : 16;	/* = Lisp_Misc_Free */
       unsigned gcmarkbit : 1;
       int spacer : 15;
       union Lisp_Misc *chain;
   #ifdef USE_LSB_TAG
       /* Try to make sure that sizeof(Lisp_Misc) is a multiple of 8.
          This assumes that Lisp_Marker is the largest of the alternatives.  */
       char padding[8 * ((sizeof (struct Lisp_Marker) - 1) / 8 + 1)
   	            - sizeof (struct Lisp_Intfwd)];
   #endif
     };

  I think this solution is acceptable since it only increases the size
  of Lisp_Misc objects from 5 words to 6 words (i.e. by 20%) on typical
  32bit machines.  Maybe we could reduce this cost by making use of this
  extra word, although I'm not sure how.

- Structures of type Lisp_Subr are statically allocated and are not
  guaranteed to be aligned on a multiple of 8.  I currently solve this
  by adding __attributes__ ((__aligned__ (8))), but this only works for GCC
  AFAIK.  The only alternative I can think of is to add a padding field
  to Lisp_Subr and when its address is not a multiple of 8, memmove it
  by a few bytes (I think `defsubr' is the only place where we refer
  to these statically allocated Sfoo variables).
  Any comment on which approach is preferable ?

- malloc does not guarantee on all systems that the returned value
  will be a multiple of 8 (or does it?).  How can I check it so as
  to automatically determine whether I can set USE_LSB_TAG (i.e. in
  `configure').  Is a heuristic check of calling malloc a few times
  with a few different odd sizes sufficient?


        Stefan

             reply	other threads:[~2003-11-12 16:22 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 7+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2003-11-12 16:22 Stefan Monnier [this message]
2003-11-12 23:30 ` Alignment of Lisp_Subr Miles Bader
2003-11-13 16:18   ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2003-11-14  5:23     ` Gaute B Strokkenes
2003-11-14 11:28       ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2003-11-16 10:25         ` Gaute B Strokkenes
2003-11-13  2:40 ` Richard Stallman

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

  List information: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=jwv8ymld1jm.fsf-monnier+emacs/devel@vor.iro.umontreal.ca \
    --to=monnier@iro.umontreal.ca \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
Code repositories for project(s) associated with this public inbox

	https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git

This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for read-only IMAP folder(s) and NNTP newsgroup(s).