* Andy Lutomirski <[email protected]> wrote:
> > The only low level bits remaining in assembly will be low level hardware
> > ABI
> > details: saving registers and restoring registers to the expected format -
> > no
> > 'active' code whatsoever.
>
> I think this is true for syscalls. Getting the weird special cases (IRET and
> GS
> fault) for error_entry to work correctly in C could be tricky.
Correct, and I double checked the IRET fault path yesterday (fixup_bad_iret),
and
it looks like a straightforward exception handler with limited control flow. It
can stay in asm just fine, it seems mostly orthogonal to the rest.
I didn't check the GS fault path, but that only affects 32-bit, as we use
SWAPGS
on 64-bit, right? In any case, that code too (32-bit RESTORE_REGS) belongs into
the natural 'hardware ABI preparation code' that should stay in assembly.
(Unless
I missed some other code that might cause trouble.)
The most deadly complexity in our asm code are IMHO the intertwined threads of
control flow - all of that should go into C, where it's much easier to see
what's
going on, because we have named variables, established code patterns and a
compiler checking for common mistakes and such.
The other big area of complexity are our partial save/restore tricks, which
makes
tracking of what is saved (and what is not) tricky and fragile.
Thanks,
Ingo
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