Re: [PATCH 1/4] Makefile: add -fno-builtin-stpcpy

[H. Peter Anvin]

On 2020-08-17 15:02, Nick Desaulniers wrote:
> LLVM implemented a recent "libcall optimization" that lowers calls to
> `sprintf(dest, "%s", str)` where the return value is used to
> `stpcpy(dest, str) - dest`. This generally avoids the machinery involved
> in parsing format strings. This optimization was introduced into
> clang-12. Because the kernel does not provide an implementation of
> stpcpy, we observe linkage failures for almost all targets when building
> with ToT clang.
> 
> The interface is unsafe as it does not perform any bounds checking.
> Disable this "libcall optimization" via `-fno-builtin-stpcpy`.
> 
> Unlike
> commit 5f074f3e192f ("lib/string.c: implement a basic bcmp")
> which cited failures with `-fno-builtin-*` flags being retained in LLVM
> LTO, that bug seems to have been fixed by
> https://reviews.llvm.org/D71193, so the above sha can now be reverted in
> favor of `-fno-builtin-bcmp`.
> 

stpcpy() and (to a lesser degree) mempcpy() are fairly useful routines
in general. Perhaps we *should* provide them?

	-hpa