xref: /openbsd-src/gnu/llvm/clang/docs/SanitizerSpecialCaseList.rst (revision 12c855180aad702bbcca06e0398d774beeafb155)
1===========================
2Sanitizer special case list
3===========================
4
5.. contents::
6   :local:
7
8Introduction
9============
10
11This document describes the way to disable or alter the behavior of
12sanitizer tools for certain source-level entities by providing a special
13file at compile-time.
14
15Goal and usage
16==============
17
18User of sanitizer tools, such as :doc:`AddressSanitizer`, :doc:`ThreadSanitizer`
19or :doc:`MemorySanitizer` may want to disable or alter some checks for
20certain source-level entities to:
21
22* speedup hot function, which is known to be correct;
23* ignore a function that does some low-level magic (e.g. walks through the
24  thread stack, bypassing the frame boundaries);
25* ignore a known problem.
26
27To achieve this, user may create a file listing the entities they want to
28ignore, and pass it to clang at compile-time using
29``-fsanitize-ignorelist`` flag. See :doc:`UsersManual` for details.
30
31Example
32=======
33
34.. code-block:: bash
35
36  $ cat foo.c
37  #include <stdlib.h>
38  void bad_foo() {
39    int *a = (int*)malloc(40);
40    a[10] = 1;
41  }
42  int main() { bad_foo(); }
43  $ cat ignorelist.txt
44  # Ignore reports from bad_foo function.
45  fun:bad_foo
46  $ clang -fsanitize=address foo.c ; ./a.out
47  # AddressSanitizer prints an error report.
48  $ clang -fsanitize=address -fsanitize-ignorelist=ignorelist.txt foo.c ; ./a.out
49  # No error report here.
50
51Format
52======
53
54Ignorelists consist of entries, optionally grouped into sections. Empty lines
55and lines starting with "#" are ignored.
56
57Section names are regular expressions written in square brackets that denote
58which sanitizer the following entries apply to. For example, ``[address]``
59specifies AddressSanitizer while ``[cfi-vcall|cfi-icall]`` specifies Control
60Flow Integrity virtual and indirect call checking. Entries without a section
61will be placed under the ``[*]`` section applying to all enabled sanitizers.
62
63Entries contain an entity type, followed by a colon and a regular expression,
64specifying the names of the entities, optionally followed by an equals sign and
65a tool-specific category, e.g. ``fun:*ExampleFunc=example_category``.  The
66meaning of ``*`` in regular expression for entity names is different - it is
67treated as in shell wildcarding. Two generic entity types are ``src`` and
68``fun``, which allow users to specify source files and functions, respectively.
69Some sanitizer tools may introduce custom entity types and categories - refer to
70tool-specific docs.
71
72.. code-block:: bash
73
74    # Lines starting with # are ignored.
75    # Turn off checks for the source file (use absolute path or path relative
76    # to the current working directory):
77    src:/path/to/source/file.c
78    # Turn off checks for this main file, including files included by it.
79    # Useful when the main file instead of an included file should be ignored.
80    mainfile:file.c
81    # Turn off checks for a particular functions (use mangled names):
82    fun:MyFooBar
83    fun:_Z8MyFooBarv
84    # Extended regular expressions are supported:
85    fun:bad_(foo|bar)
86    src:bad_source[1-9].c
87    # Shell like usage of * is supported (* is treated as .*):
88    src:bad/sources/*
89    fun:*BadFunction*
90    # Specific sanitizer tools may introduce categories.
91    src:/special/path/*=special_sources
92    # Sections can be used to limit ignorelist entries to specific sanitizers
93    [address]
94    fun:*BadASanFunc*
95    # Section names are regular expressions
96    [cfi-vcall|cfi-icall]
97    fun:*BadCfiCall
98    # Entries without sections are placed into [*] and apply to all sanitizers
99
100``mainfile`` is similar to applying ``-fno-sanitize=`` to a set of files but
101does not need plumbing into the build system. This works well for internal
102linkage functions but has a caveat for C++ vague linkage functions.
103
104C++ vague linkage functions (e.g. inline functions, template instantiations) are
105deduplicated at link time. A function (in an included file) ignored by a
106specific ``mainfile`` pattern may not be the prevailing copy picked by the
107linker. Therefore, using ``mainfile`` requires caution. It may still be useful,
108e.g. when patterns are picked in a way to ensure the prevailing one is ignored.
109(There is action-at-a-distance risk.)
110
111``mainfile`` can be useful enabling a ubsan check for a large code base when
112finding the direct stack frame triggering the failure for every failure is
113difficult.
114