[fpc-devel] Regarding issue/patch 0032637

[Sergei Gorelkin]

29.11.2017 15:12, J. Gareth Moreton wrote:
> Thanks Christo.
> 
> Apologies for 4 messages coming in at once.  I think there were a few technical glitches with the mailing
> list.  Either way, I have submitted an updated patch to the bug report in question that corrects the stack
> unwinding for Windows.  Any testing would be greatly appreciated (I'm not in a position to rigorously test
> the code for Linux).
> 
> Yeah, I got a little emotional with Thaddy's response (which has since been deleted), partly because he
> mocked me a bit for even attempting to use assembly language for optimisation. Granted, I tend to do more
> low-level and mathematical programming than higher-level components, where assembler optimisation can really
> pay dividends. Plus in a perverted way, I actually enjoy trying to squeeze another microsecond out of
> running time!
> 
> Gareth aka. Kit.
> 

I should have read and answered earlier, but better late than never.

The x86-64 target (actually, all targets except i386 and m68k) use concept of fixed stack. This 
means: all changes to the stack pointer are done at the beginning and at the end of procedure. 
Pushing something in the middle is illegal. The stack pointer itself needs to be aligned only at the 
point of calling another procedure. As a consequence, simple procedures that don't call other 
procedures and don't use nonvolatile registers can have the stack pointer misaligned by 8 bytes as 
it naturally is at the first instruction (such procedures don't need any SEH annotations at all, 
which is a way to simplify things).
Now, several first instructions where is stack pointer is changed and nonvolatile registers are 
saved is called prologue. It is delimited by .seh_endprologue directive and can be at most 255 bytes 
in size.
The advice given at forum to insert .seh_endprologue at the very beginning is plain wrong. 
.seh_endprologue must be the last SEH directive in procedure. Compiler probably needs to do more 
checks and reject SEH directives coming after .seh_endprologue.

Regards,
Sergei