Original bug ID: 5088
Reporter: jp30
Assigned to: @xavierleroy
Status: closed (set by @xavierleroy on 2012-03-24T14:01:46Z)
Resolution: fixed
Priority: normal
Severity: major
Version: 3.12.0+beta1 or 3.12.0+rc1
Fixed in version: 3.12.0+beta1 or 3.12.0+rc1
Category: ~DO NOT USE (was: OCaml general)

Bug description

The default behaviour of linux on ARM processors is to ignore alignment faults occurring in user processes (rather than sending a SIGBUS, as is normal on other alignment-sensitive architectures). The instruction causing the fault, however, has undefined results.

Ocaml's configuration script attempts to detect alignment-sensitivity by trying to provoke a SIGBUS in config/auto-aux/int64align.c. On ARM systems running linux, the alignment fault is ignored, leading the configuration script to incorrectly unset ARCH_ALIGN_INT64 in config/m.h.

Steps to reproduce:

$ echo 0 > /proc/cpu/alignment # this is the default - ignore alignment faults
$ ./configure && make world # will SIGSEGV
$ grep ALIGN_INT64 config/m.h
#undef ARCH_ALIGN_INT64
$ echo 4 > /proc/cpu/alignment # alignment faults now cause SIGBUS
$ make clean && make world # will SIGBUS

$ echo 4 > /proc/cpu/alignment # alignment faults cause SIGBUS
$ ./configure && make world # build completes correctly
$ grep ALIGN_INT64 config/m.h
#define ARCH_ALIGN_INT64

Suggested remedy:

Since ignoring alignment faults is default behaviour for linux on ARM, I suggest that the configure script set ARCH_ALIGN_INT64 for all arm*-linux hosts (as is already done for sparc).

The problem doesn't seem to occur with gcc 4.3. Possibly earlier gccs don't provide native 64 bit ints on ARM???