Emulated TLS - GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) Internals
Description: GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) Internals

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### 17.26 Emulating TLS

For targets whose psABI does not provide Thread Local Storage via specific relocations and instruction sequences, an emulation layer is used. A set of target hooks allows this emulation layer to be configured for the requirements of a particular target. For instance the psABI may in fact specify TLS support in terms of an emulation layer.

The emulation layer works by creating a control object for every TLS object. To access the TLS object, a lookup function is provided which, when given the address of the control object, will return the address of the current thread's instance of the TLS object.

— Target Hook: const char * TARGET_EMUTLS_GET_ADDRESS

> Contains the name of the helper function that uses a TLS control object to locate a TLS instance. The default causes libgcc's emulated TLS helper function to be used.

— Target Hook: const char * TARGET_EMUTLS_REGISTER_COMMON

> Contains the name of the helper function that should be used at program startup to register TLS objects that are implicitly initialized to zero. If this is `NULL`, all TLS objects will have explicit initializers. The default causes libgcc's emulated TLS registration function to be used.

— Target Hook: const char * TARGET_EMUTLS_VAR_SECTION

> Contains the name of the section in which TLS control variables should be placed. The default of `NULL` allows these to be placed in any section.

— Target Hook: const char * TARGET_EMUTLS_TMPL_SECTION

> Contains the name of the section in which TLS initializers should be placed. The default of `NULL` allows these to be placed in any section.

— Target Hook: const char * TARGET_EMUTLS_VAR_PREFIX

> Contains the prefix to be prepended to TLS control variable names. The default of `NULL` uses a target-specific prefix.

— Target Hook: const char * TARGET_EMUTLS_TMPL_PREFIX

> Contains the prefix to be prepended to TLS initializer objects. The default of `NULL` uses a target-specific prefix.

— Target Hook: tree TARGET_EMUTLS_VAR_FIELDS (tree type, tree *name)

> Specifies a function that generates the FIELD_DECLs for a TLS control object type. type is the RECORD_TYPE the fields are for and name should be filled with the structure tag, if the default of `__emutls_object` is unsuitable. The default creates a type suitable for libgcc's emulated TLS function.

— Target Hook: tree TARGET_EMUTLS_VAR_INIT (tree var, tree decl, tree tmpl_addr)

> Specifies a function that generates the CONSTRUCTOR to initialize a TLS control object. var is the TLS control object, decl is the TLS object and tmpl_addr is the address of the initializer. The default initializes libgcc's emulated TLS control object.

— Target Hook: bool TARGET_EMUTLS_VAR_ALIGN_FIXED

> Specifies whether the alignment of TLS control variable objects is fixed and should not be increased as some backends may do to optimize single objects. The default is false.

— Target Hook: bool TARGET_EMUTLS_DEBUG_FORM_TLS_ADDRESS

> Specifies whether a DWARF `DW_OP_form_tls_address` location descriptor may be used to describe emulated TLS control objects.