| # bionic maintainer overview |
| |
| [bionic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bionic_(software)) is Android's |
| C library, math library, and dynamic linker. |
| |
| This document is a high-level overview of making changes to bionic itself. |
| If you're trying to _use_ bionic, or want more in-depth information about |
| some part of the implementation, see [all the bionic documentation](docs/). |
| |
| ## What are the big pieces of bionic? |
| |
| #### libc/ --- libc.so, libc.a |
| |
| The C library. Stuff like `fopen(3)` and `kill(2)`. |
| |
| #### libm/ --- libm.so, libm.a |
| |
| The math library. Traditionally Unix systems kept stuff like `sin(3)` and |
| `cos(3)` in a separate library to save space in the days before shared |
| libraries. |
| |
| #### libdl/ --- libdl.so |
| |
| The dynamic linker interface library. This is actually just a bunch of stubs |
| that the dynamic linker replaces with pointers to its own implementation at |
| runtime. This is where stuff like `dlopen(3)` lives. |
| |
| #### libstdc++/ --- libstdc++.so |
| |
| The C++ ABI support functions. The C++ compiler doesn't know how to implement |
| thread-safe static initialization and the like, so it just calls functions that |
| are supplied by the system. Stuff like `__cxa_guard_acquire` and |
| `__cxa_pure_virtual` live here. |
| |
| #### linker/ --- /system/bin/linker and /system/bin/linker64 |
| |
| The dynamic linker. When you run a dynamically-linked executable, its ELF file |
| has a `DT_INTERP` entry that says "use the following program to start me". On |
| Android, that's either `linker` or `linker64` (depending on whether it's a |
| 32-bit or 64-bit executable). It's responsible for loading the ELF executable |
| into memory and resolving references to symbols (so that when your code tries to |
| jump to `fopen(3)`, say, it lands in the right place). |
| |
| #### tests/ --- unit tests |
| |
| The `tests/` directory contains unit tests. Roughly arranged as one file per |
| publicly-exported header file. `tests/headers/` contains compile-only tests |
| that just check that things are _in_ the headers, whereas the "real" tests |
| check actual _behavior_. |
| |
| #### benchmarks/ --- benchmarks |
| |
| The `benchmarks/` directory contains benchmarks, with its own [documentation](benchmarks/README.md). |
| |
| |
| ## What's in libc/? |
| |
| ``` |
| libc/ |
| arch-arm/ |
| arch-arm64/ |
| arch-common/ |
| arch-x86/ |
| arch-x86_64/ |
| # Each architecture has its own subdirectory for stuff that isn't shared |
| # because it's architecture-specific. There will be a .mk file in here that |
| # drags in all the architecture-specific files. |
| bionic/ |
| # Every architecture needs a handful of machine-specific assembler files. |
| # They live here. |
| string/ |
| # Most architectures have a handful of optional assembler files |
| # implementing optimized versions of various routines. The <string.h> |
| # functions are particular favorites. |
| syscalls/ |
| # The syscalls directories contain script-generated assembler files. |
| # See 'Adding system calls' later. |
| |
| include/ |
| # The public header files on everyone's include path. These are a mixture of |
| # files written by us and files taken from BSD. |
| |
| kernel/ |
| # The kernel uapi header files. The "libc" headers that developers actually |
| # use are a mixture of headers provided by the C library itself (which, |
| # for bionic, are in bionic/libc/include/) and headers provided by the |
| # kernel. This is because ISO C and POSIX will say things like "there is |
| # a constant called PROT_NONE" or "there is a type called struct stat, |
| # and it contains a field called st_size", but they won't necessarily say |
| # what _value_ that constant has, or what _order_ the fields in a type |
| # are in. Those are left to individual kernels' ABIs. In an effort to -- |
| # amongst other things, see https://lwn.net/Articles/507794/ for more |
| # background -- reduce copy & paste, the Linux kernel makes all the types |
| # and constants that make up the "userspace API" (uapi) available as |
| # headers separate from their internal-use headers (which contain all kinds |
| # of extra stuff that isn't available to userspace). We import the latest |
| # released kernel's uapi headers in external/kernel-headers/, but we don't |
| # use those headers directly in bionic. The bionic/libc/kernel/ directory |
| # contains scrubbed copies of the originals from external/kernel-headers/. |
| # The generate_uapi_headers.sh script should be used to go from a kernel |
| # tree to external/kernel-headers/ --- this takes care of the |
| # architecture-specific details. The update_all.py script should then be |
| # used to regenerate bionic's copy from external/kernel-headers/. |
| # The files in bionic must not be edited directly because any local changes |
| # will be overwritten by the next update. "Updating kernel header files" |
| # below has more information on this process. |
| |
| private/ |
| # These are private header files meant for use within bionic itself. |
| |
| dns/ |
| # Contains the DNS resolver (originates from NetBSD code). |
| |
| upstream-freebsd/ |
| upstream-netbsd/ |
| upstream-openbsd/ |
| # These directories contain upstream source with no local changes. |
| # Any time we can just use a BSD implementation of something unmodified, |
| # we should. Ideally these should probably have been three separate git |
| # projects in external/, but they're here instead mostly by historical |
| # accident (because it wouldn't have been easy to import just the tiny |
| # subset of these operating systems that -- unlike Android -- just have |
| # one huge repository rather than lots of little ones and a mechanism |
| # like our `repo` tool). |
| # The structure under these directories mimics the relevant upstream tree, |
| # but in order to actually be able to compile this code in our tree |
| # _without_ making modifications to the source files directly, we also |
| # have the following subdirectories in each one that aren't upstream: |
| android/ |
| include/ |
| # This is where we keep the hacks necessary to build BSD source |
| # in our world. The *-compat.h files are automatically included |
| # using -include, but we also provide equivalents for missing |
| # header/source files needed by the BSD implementation. |
| |
| bionic/ |
| # This is the biggest mess. The C++ files are files we own, typically |
| # because the Linux kernel interface is sufficiently different that we |
| # can't use any of the BSD implementations. The C files are usually |
| # legacy mess that needs to be sorted out, either by replacing it with |
| # current upstream source in one of the upstream directories or by |
| # switching the file to C++ and cleaning it up. |
| |
| malloc_debug/ |
| # The code that implements the functionality to enable debugging of |
| # native allocation problems. |
| |
| stdio/ |
| # These are legacy files of dubious provenance. We're working to clean |
| # this mess up, and this directory should disappear. |
| |
| tools/ |
| # Various tools used to maintain bionic. |
| |
| tzcode/ |
| # A modified superset of the IANA tzcode. Most of the modifications relate |
| # to Android's use of a single file (with corresponding index) to contain |
| # timezone data. |
| zoneinfo/ |
| # Android-format timezone data. |
| # See 'Updating tzdata' later. |
| ``` |
| |
| |
| ## Adding libc wrappers for system calls |
| |
| The first question you should ask is "should I add a libc wrapper for |
| this system call?". The answer is usually "no". |
| |
| The answer is "yes" if the system call is part of the POSIX standard. |
| |
| The answer is probably "yes" if the system call has a wrapper in at |
| least one other C library (typically glibc/musl or Apple's libc). |
| |
| The answer may be "yes" if the system call has three/four distinct |
| users in different projects, and there isn't a more specific higher-level |
| library that would make more sense as the place to add the wrapper. |
| |
| In all other cases, you should use |
| [syscall(3)](https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/syscall.2.html) instead. |
| |
| Adding a system call usually involves: |
| |
| 1. Add an entry (or entries, in some cases) to SYSCALLS.TXT. |
| See SYSCALLS.TXT itself for documentation on the format. |
| See also the notes below for how to deal with tricky cases like `off_t`. |
| 2. Find the right header file to work in by looking up your system call |
| on [man7.org](https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/dir_section_2.html). |
| (If there's no header file given, see the points above about whether we |
| should really be adding this or not!) |
| 3. Add constants (and perhaps types) to the appropriate header file. |
| Note that you should check to see whether the constants are already in |
| kernel uapi header files, in which case you just need to make sure that |
| the appropriate header file in libc/include/ `#include`s the relevant |
| `linux/` file or files. |
| 4. Add function declarations to the appropriate header file. Don't forget |
| to include the appropriate `__INTRODUCED_IN()`, with the right API level |
| for the first release your system call wrapper will be in. See |
| libc/include/android/api_level.h for the API levels. |
| If the header file doesn't exist, copy all of libc/include/sys/sysinfo.h |
| into your new file --- it's a good short example to start from. |
| |
| Note also our style for naming arguments: always use two leading |
| underscores (so developers are free to use any of the unadorned names as |
| macros without breaking things), avoid abbreviations, and ideally try to |
| use the same name as an existing system call (to reduce the amount of |
| English vocabulary required by people who just want to use the function |
| signatures). If there's a similar function already in the C library, |
| check what names it's used. Finally, prefer the `void*` orthography we |
| use over the `void *` you'll see on man7.org.) |
| 5. Add basic documentation to the header file. Again, the existing |
| libc/include/sys/sysinfo.h is a good short example that shows the |
| expected style. |
| |
| Most of the detail should actually be left to the man7.org page, with |
| only a brief one-sentence explanation (usually based on the description |
| in the NAME section of the man page) in our documentation. Always |
| include the return value/error reporting details (you can find out |
| what the system call returns from the RETURN VALUE of the man page), |
| but try to match the wording and style wording from _our_ existing |
| documentation; we're trying to minimize the amount of English readers |
| need to understand by using the exact same wording where possible). |
| Explicitly say which version of Android the function was added to in |
| the documentation because the documentation generation tool doesn't yet |
| understand `__INTRODUCED_IN()`. |
| |
| Explicitly call out any Android-specific changes/additions/limitations |
| because they won't be on the man7.org page. |
| 6. Add the function name to the correct section in libc/libc.map.txt; it'll |
| be near the end of the file. You may need to add a new section if you're |
| the first to add a system call to this version of Android. |
| 7. Add a basic test. Don't try to test everything; concentrate on just testing |
| the code that's actually in *bionic*, not all the functionality that's |
| implemented in the kernel. For simple syscalls, that's just the |
| auto-generated argument and return value marshalling. |
| |
| Add a test in the right file in tests/. We have one file per header, so if |
| your system call is exposed in <unistd.h>, for example, your test would go |
| in tests/unistd_test.cpp. |
| |
| A trivial test that deliberately supplies an invalid argument helps check |
| that we're generating the right symbol and have the right declaration in |
| the header file, and that the change to libc.map.txt from step 5 is |
| correct. (You can use strace(1) manually to confirm that the correct |
| system call is being made.) |
| |
| For testing the *kernel* side of things, we should prefer to rely on |
| https://github.com/linux-test-project/ltp for kernel testing, but you'll |
| want to check that external/ltp does contain tests for the syscall you're |
| adding. Also check that external/ltp is using the libc wrapper for the |
| syscall rather than calling it "directly" via syscall(3)! |
| |
| Some system calls are harder than others. The most common problem is a 64-bit |
| argument such as `off64_t` (a *pointer* to a 64-bit argument is fine, since |
| pointers are always the "natural" size for the architecture regardless of the |
| size of the thing they point to). Whenever you have a function that takes |
| `off_t` or `off64_t`, you'll need to consider whether you actually need a foo() |
| and a foo64(), and whether they will use the same underlying system call or are |
| implemented as two different system calls. It's usually easiest to find a |
| similar system call and copy and paste from that. You'll definitely need to test |
| both on 32-bit and 64-bit. (These special cases warrant more testing than the |
| easy cases, even if only manual testing with strace. Sadly it isn't always |
| feasible to write a working test for the interesting cases -- offsets larger |
| than 2GiB, say -- so you may end up just writing a "meaningless" program whose |
| only purpose is to give you patterns to look for when run under strace(1).) |
| |
| A general example of adding a system call: |
| https://android-review.googlesource.com/c/platform/bionic/+/2073827 |
| |
| ### Debugging tips |
| 1. Key error for a new codename in libc/libc.map.txt |
| |
| e.g. what you add in libc/libc.map.txt is: |
| |
| ``` |
| LIBC_V { # introduced=Vanilla |
| global: |
| xxx; // the new system call you add |
| } LIBC_U; |
| ``` |
| |
| The error output is: |
| |
| ``` |
| Traceback (most recent call last): |
| File "/path/tp/out/soong/.temp/Soong.python_qucjwd7g/symbolfile/__init__.py", line 171, |
| in decode_api_level_tag |
| decoded = str(decode_api_level(value, api_map)) |
| File "/path/to/out/soong/.temp/Soong.python_qucjwd7g/symbolfile/__init__.py", line 157, |
| in decode_api_level |
| return api_map[api] |
| KeyError: 'Vanilla' |
| ``` |
| |
| Solution: Ask in the team and wait for the update. |
| |
| 2. Use of undeclared identifier of the new system call in the test |
| |
| Possible Solution: Check everything ready in the files mentioned above first. |
| Maybe glibc matters. Follow the example and try #if defined(__GLIBC__). |
| |
| ## Updating kernel header files |
| |
| As mentioned above, this is currently a two-step process: |
| |
| 1. Use generate_uapi_headers.sh to go from a Linux source tree to appropriate |
| contents for external/kernel-headers/. |
| 2. Run update_all.py to scrub those headers and import them into bionic. |
| |
| Note that if you're actually just trying to expose device-specific headers to |
| build your device drivers, you shouldn't modify bionic. Instead use |
| `TARGET_DEVICE_KERNEL_HEADERS` and friends described in [config.mk](https://android.googlesource.com/platform/build/+/main/core/config.mk#186). |
| |
| |
| ## Updating tzdata |
| |
| This is handled by the libcore team, because they own icu, and that needs to be |
| updated in sync with bionic). See |
| [system/timezone/README.android](https://android.googlesource.com/platform/system/timezone/+/main/README.android). |
| |
| |
| ## Verifying changes |
| |
| If you make a change that is likely to have a wide effect on the tree (such as a |
| libc header change), you should run `make checkbuild`. A regular `make` will |
| _not_ build the entire tree; just the minimum number of projects that are |
| required for the device. Tests, additional developer tools, and various other |
| modules will not be built. Note that `make checkbuild` will not be complete |
| either, as `make tests` covers a few additional modules, but generally speaking |
| `make checkbuild` is enough. |
| |
| |
| ## Running the tests |
| |
| The tests are all built from the tests/ directory. There is a separate |
| directory `benchmarks/` containing benchmarks, and that has its own |
| documentation on [running the benchmarks](benchmarks/README.md). |
| |
| ### Device tests |
| |
| $ mma # In $ANDROID_ROOT/bionic. |
| $ adb root && adb remount && adb sync |
| $ adb shell /data/nativetest/bionic-unit-tests/bionic-unit-tests |
| $ adb shell \ |
| /data/nativetest/bionic-unit-tests-static/bionic-unit-tests-static |
| # Only for 64-bit targets |
| $ adb shell /data/nativetest64/bionic-unit-tests/bionic-unit-tests |
| $ adb shell \ |
| /data/nativetest64/bionic-unit-tests-static/bionic-unit-tests-static |
| |
| Note that we use our own custom gtest runner that offers a superset of the |
| options documented at |
| <https://github.com/google/googletest/blob/main/docs/advanced.md#running-test-programs-advanced-options>, |
| in particular for test isolation and parallelism (both on by default). |
| |
| ### Device tests via CTS |
| |
| Most of the unit tests are executed by CTS. By default, CTS runs as |
| a non-root user, so the unit tests must also pass when not run as root. |
| Some tests cannot do any useful work unless run as root. In this case, |
| the test should check `getuid() == 0` and do nothing otherwise (typically |
| we log in this case to prevent accidents!). Obviously, if the test can be |
| rewritten to not require root, that's an even better solution. |
| |
| Currently, the list of bionic CTS tests is generated at build time by |
| running a host version of the test executable and dumping the list of |
| all tests. In order for this to continue to work, all architectures must |
| have the same number of tests, and the host version of the executable |
| must also have the same number of tests. |
| |
| Running the gtests directly is orders of magnitude faster than using CTS, |
| but in cases where you really have to run CTS: |
| |
| $ make cts # In $ANDROID_ROOT. |
| $ adb unroot # Because real CTS doesn't run as root. |
| # This will sync any *test* changes, but not *code* changes: |
| $ cts-tradefed \ |
| run singleCommand cts --skip-preconditions -m CtsBionicTestCases |
| |
| ### Host tests |
| |
| The host tests require that you have `lunch`ed either an x86 or x86_64 target. |
| Note that due to ABI limitations (specifically, the size of pthread_mutex_t), |
| 32-bit bionic requires PIDs less than 65536. To enforce this, set /proc/sys/kernel/pid_max |
| to 65536. |
| |
| $ ./tests/run-on-host.sh 32 |
| $ ./tests/run-on-host.sh 64 # For x86_64-bit *targets* only. |
| |
| You can supply gtest flags as extra arguments to this script. |
| |
| ### Against glibc |
| |
| As a way to check that our tests do in fact test the correct behavior (and not |
| just the behavior we think is correct), it is possible to run the tests against |
| the host's glibc. |
| |
| $ ./tests/run-on-host.sh glibc |
| |
| ### Against musl |
| |
| Another way to verify test behavior is to run against musl on the host. glibc |
| musl don't always match, so this can be a good way to find the more complicated |
| corners of the spec. If they *do* match, bionic probably should too! |
| |
| $ OUT_DIR=$(ANDROID_BUILD_TOP)/musl-out ./tests/run-on-host.sh musl |
| |
| Note: the alternate OUT_DIR is used to avoid causing excessive rebuilding when |
| switching between glibc and musl. The first musl test run will be expensive |
| because it will not reuse any already built artifacts, but subsequent runs will |
| be cheaper than if you hadn't used it. |
| |
| ## Gathering test coverage |
| |
| To get test coverage for bionic, use `//bionic/build/coverage.sh`. Before |
| running, follow the instructions at the top of the file to rebuild bionic with |
| coverage instrumentation. |
| |
| ## Attaching GDB to the tests |
| |
| Bionic's test runner will run each test in its own process by default to prevent |
| tests failures from impacting other tests. This also has the added benefit of |
| running them in parallel, so they are much faster. |
| |
| However, this also makes it difficult to run the tests under GDB. To prevent |
| each test from being forked, run the tests with the flag `--no-isolate`. |
| |
| |
| ## 32-bit ABI bugs |
| |
| See [32-bit ABI bugs](docs/32-bit-abi.md). |