Rust: .rodata bloat with aligned zero sized objects

[haraldh]

I tried this code:

#![allow(unused_variables, unused_mut)]

#[repr(align(0x200000))]
pub struct Page2MiB;

pub fn main() {
    // Version a: .rodata size <<<<< 0x200000
    let mut slice = [0u8];

    // Version b: .rodata size > 0x200000
    let mut slice = vec![0u8]; let slice = slice.as_mut_slice();

    let (pre, middle, post) = unsafe { slice.align_to_mut::<Page2MiB>() };
    dbg!(pre.len(), middle.len(), post.len());
}

Edit: which can be further reduced to:

pub fn main() {
    #[repr(align(0x200000))]
    pub struct Aligned;
    dbg!();
    let slice: &mut [Aligned; 0] = &mut [];
    dbg!(slice.as_ptr());
}

I expected to see this happen:

$ rustc main.rs && size -A main | fgrep .rodata
.rodata                   17449   2097152

A reasonable section size of .rodata, like if Version b is commented out.

Instead, this happened:

$ rustc main.rs && size -A main | fgrep .rodata
.rodata                 2114473   2097152

A .rodata section with over 2MB.

With this minimal example, opt-level makes it go away, but with more complex code it does not.

The culprit is:

$ rustc --emit=asm main.rs && egrep -5 'p2align[[:space:]]+21' main.s
    .asciz  "k\000\000\000\000\000\000\000[\004\000\000\035\000\000"
    .size   .L__unnamed_3, 24

    .type   .L__unnamed_19,@object
    .section    .rodata..L__unnamed_19,"a",@progbits
    .p2align    21
.L__unnamed_19:
    .size   .L__unnamed_19, 0

    .type   .L__unnamed_4,@object
    .section    .data.rel.ro..L__unnamed_4,"aw",@progbits

So, we have a zero-sized object, but an alignment was forced.
I don't know, if this is an LLVM bug.

$ rustc --emit=llvm-ir main.rs && grep 'align 2097152' main.ll
@alloc162 = private unnamed_addr constant <{ [0 x i8] }> zeroinitializer, align 2097152
define internal i64 @"_ZN4core5slice29_$LT$impl$u20$$u5b$T$u5d$$GT$3len17h52545189b0701658E"([0 x %Page2MiB]* noalias nonnull readonly align 2097152 %self.0, i64 %self.1) unnamed_addr #1 {
  %_45 = call i64 @"_ZN4core5slice29_$LT$impl$u20$$u5b$T$u5d$$GT$3len17h52545189b0701658E"([0 x %Page2MiB]* noalias nonnull readonly align 2097152 %middle.0, i64 %middle.1)

Again, zero-sized, but with align 2097152.

Meta

rustc --version --verbose:

rustc --version --verbose
rustc 1.45.2 (d3fb005a3 2020-07-31)
binary: rustc
commit-hash: d3fb005a39e62501b8b0b356166e515ae24e2e54
commit-date: 2020-07-31
host: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
release: 1.45.2
LLVM version: 10.0

and nightly:

$ rustc +nightly -Vv
rustc 1.47.0-nightly (18f3be770 2020-08-09)
binary: rustc
commit-hash: 18f3be7704a4ec7976fcd1272c728974243d29bd
commit-date: 2020-08-09
host: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
release: 1.47.0-nightly
LLVM version: 10.0

[RalfJung]

So, we have an unsized object, but an alignment was forced.

(I assume you mean zero-sized? "unsized" is something else.)
I don't see a bug here. Zero-sized objects have alignment requirements like all others, they are not special in that regard.

For example, a &[i32; 0] must be 4-aligned, otherwise even creating such a reference is UB.

[haraldh]

Huh, so having 2MB zeros on disk for nothing is OK?

[RalfJung]

Huh, so having 2MB zeros on disk for nothing is OK?

I didn't say that. The object can still occupy zero bytes. But it also has an address, and that address must be appropriately aligned.

I am afraid I don't know the details of the ELF format or the optimizations involved. All I am saying is that "it has size 0 and alignment is forced" is expected behavior. There is possibly a bug elsewhere, but the fact that "alignment is forced" is not a bug. It would be a critical bug if alignment was not enforced! (See e.g. https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/70143, https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/70022.)

Cc @Amanieu

[haraldh]

Can't we give it address 0 which is aligned to everything?

[lzutao]

Is it null?

[haraldh]

Except querying the len() you can't do much with it.

[RalfJung]

No, address 0 is not a valid address for any object.

[haraldh]

But yeah... dbg!(middle.as_ptr()); should give an aligned pointer.

[lzutao]

The problem with reference at zero is that when you get raw pointer from it,
how do you know it is null or not?

[haraldh]

Ok, this is what it can be reduced to:

pub fn main() {
    #[repr(align(0x200000))]
    pub struct Aligned;
    dbg!();
    let slice: &mut [Aligned; 0] = &mut [];
    dbg!(slice.as_ptr());
}

[tmiasko]

-Clink-args=-Wl,--sort-section=alignment might improve the situation.

[haraldh]

-Clink-args=-Wl,--sort-section=alignment might improve the situation.

very good, thank you!

[haraldh]

-Clink-args=-Wl,--sort-section=alignment might improve the situation.

❯ rustc -C opt-level=3 src/main.rs && strip main && ls -hs main
2,3M main

❯ rustc -C opt-level=3 -Clink-args=-Wl,--sort-section=alignment src/main.rs && strip main && ls -hs main
231K main

[haraldh]

pub fn main() {
    dbg!();
    #[repr(align(536870912))]
    pub struct Aligned;
    let slice: &mut [Aligned; 0] = &mut [];
    dbg!(slice.as_ptr());
}

to the extreme (even with opt-level=s):

❯ rustc -C opt-level=s src/main.rs && strip main && ls -hs main
513M main

[haraldh]

So, I would suggest opt-level=s at least should include --sort-section=alignment

[workingjubilee]

...wait, what magic happened here exactly? Does telling the linker to sort by alignment seriously just guarantee that all ZSTs overlap the same address in the binary space? If so, there's no obvious reason not to always do it for all ZSTs, is there?