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Date:   Tue, 21 Jan 2020 10:10:45 -0600
From:   Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com>
To:     Miroslav Benes <mbenes@suse.cz>
Cc:     Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>,
        Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>,
        Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>,
        Jessica Yu <jeyu@kernel.org>, x86@kernel.org,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, mhiramat@kernel.org,
        bristot@redhat.com, jbaron@akamai.com,
        torvalds@linux-foundation.org, tglx@linutronix.de,
        mingo@kernel.org, namit@vmware.com, hpa@zytor.com, luto@kernel.org,
        ard.biesheuvel@linaro.org, live-patching@vger.kernel.org,
        Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 5/6] x86/ftrace: Use text_poke()
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On Tue, Jan 21, 2020 at 09:35:28AM +0100, Miroslav Benes wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Jan 2020, Josh Poimboeuf wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, Oct 21, 2019 at 10:05:49AM -0500, Josh Poimboeuf wrote:
> > > On Wed, Oct 16, 2019 at 09:42:17AM +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> > > > > which are not compatible with livepatching. GCC upstream now has
> > > > > -flive-patching option, which disables all those interfering optimizations.
> > > > 
> > > > Which, IIRC, has a significant performance impact and should thus really
> > > > not be used...
> > > > 
> > > > If distros ship that crap, I'm going to laugh at them the next time they
> > > > want a single digit performance improvement because *important*.
> > > 
> > > I have a crazy plan to try to use objtool to detect function changes at
> > > a binary level, which would hopefully allow us to drop this flag.
> > > 
> > > But regardless, I wonder if we enabled this flag prematurely.  We still
> > > don't have a reasonable way to use it for creating source-based live
> > > patches upstream, and it should really be optional for CONFIG_LIVEPATCH,
> > > since kpatch-build doesn't need it.
> > 
> > I also just discovered that -flive-patching is responsible for all those
> > "unreachable instruction" objtool warnings which Randy has been
> > dutifully bugging me about over the last several months.  For some
> > reason it subtly breaks GCC implicit noreturn detection for local
> > functions.
> 
> Ugh, that is unfortunate. Have you reported it?

Not yet (but I plan to).

> > At this point, I only see downsides of -flive-patching, at least until
> > we actually have real upstream code which needs it.
> 
> Can you explain this? The option makes GCC to avoid optimizations which 
> are difficult to detect and would make live patching unsafe. I consider it 
> useful as it is, so if you shared the other downsides and what you meant 
> by real upstream code, we could discuss it.

Only SLES needs it right?  Why inflict it on other livepatch users?  By
"real upstream code" I mean there's no (documented) way to create live
patches using the method which relies on this flag.  So I don't see any
upstream benefits for having it enabled.

-- 
Josh