Don’t shoot yourself in the foot with the C++ move constructor

Move semantics can be very useful to transfer ownership of resources, but as many other C++ features, it’s one more double edge sword that can harm yourself in new and interesting ways if you don’t read the small print.

For instance, if object moving involves super and subclasses, you have to keep an extra eye on what’s actually happening. Consider the following classes A and B, where the latter inherits from the former:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <utility>

#define PF printf("%s %p\n", __PRETTY_FUNCTION__, this)

class A {
 public:
 A() { PF; }
 virtual ~A() { PF; }
 A(A&& other)
 {
  PF;
  std::swap(i, other.i);
 }

 int i = 0;
};

class B : public A {
 public:
 B() { PF; }
 virtual ~B() { PF; }
 B(B&& other)
 {
  PF;
  std::swap(i, other.i);
  std::swap(j, other.j);
 }

 int j = 0;
};

If your project is complex, it would be natural that your code involves abstractions, with part of the responsibility held by the superclass, and some other part by the subclass. Consider also that some of that code in the superclass involves move semantics, so a subclass object must be moved to become a superclass object, then perform some action, and then moved back to become the subclass again. That’s a really bad idea!

Consider this usage of the classes defined before:

int main(int, char* argv[]) {
 printf("Creating B b1\n");
 B b1;
 b1.i = 1;
 b1.j = 2;
 printf("b1.i = %d\n", b1.i);
 printf("b1.j = %d\n", b1.j);
 printf("Moving (B)b1 to (A)a. Which move constructor will be used?\n");
 A a(std::move(b1));
 printf("a.i = %d\n", a.i);
 // This may be reading memory beyond the object boundaries, which may not be
 // obvious if you think that (A)a is sort of a (B)b1 in disguise, but it's not!
 printf("(B)a.j = %d\n", reinterpret_cast<B&>(a).j);
 printf("Moving (A)a to (B)b2. Which move constructor will be used?\n");
 B b2(reinterpret_cast<B&&>(std::move(a)));
 printf("b2.i = %d\n", b2.i);
 printf("b2.j = %d\n", b2.j);
 printf("^^^ Oops!! Somebody forgot to copy the j field when creating (A)a. Oh, wait... (A)a never had a j field in the first place\n");
 printf("Destroying b2, a, b1\n");
 return 0;
}

If you’ve read the code, those printfs will have already given you some hints about the harsh truth: if you move a subclass object to become a superclass object, you’re losing all the subclass specific data, because no matter if the original instance was one from a subclass, only the superclass move constructor will be used. And that’s bad, very bad. This problem is called object slicing. It’s specific to C++ and can also happen with copy constructors. See it with your own eyes:

Creating B b1
A::A() 0x7ffd544ca690
B::B() 0x7ffd544ca690
b1.i = 1
b1.j = 2
Moving (B)b1 to (A)a. Which move constructor will be used?
A::A(A&&) 0x7ffd544ca6a0
a.i = 1
(B)a.j = 0
Moving (A)a to (B)b2. Which move constructor will be used?
A::A() 0x7ffd544ca6b0
B::B(B&&) 0x7ffd544ca6b0
b2.i = 1
b2.j = 0
^^^ Oops!! Somebody forgot to copy the j field when creating (A)a. Oh, wait... (A)a never had a j field in the first place
Destroying b2, a, b1
virtual B::~B() 0x7ffd544ca6b0
virtual A::~A() 0x7ffd544ca6b0
virtual A::~A() 0x7ffd544ca6a0
virtual B::~B() 0x7ffd544ca690
virtual A::~A() 0x7ffd544ca690

Why can something that seems so obvious become such a problem, you may ask? Well, it depends on the context. It’s not unusual for the codebase of a long lived project to have started using raw pointers for everything, then switching to using references as a way to get rid of null pointer issues when possible, and finally switch to whole objects and copy/move semantics to get rid or pointer issues (references are just pointers in disguise after all, and there are ways to produce null and dangling references by mistake). But this last step of moving from references to copy/move semantics on whole objects comes with the small object slicing nuance explained in this post, and when the size and all the different things to have into account about the project steals your focus, it’s easy to forget about this.

So, please remember: never use move semantics that convert your precious subclass instance to a superclass instance thinking that the subclass data will survive. You can regret about it and create difficult to debug problems inadvertedly.

Happy coding!

GStreamer WebKit debugging by using external tools (2/2)

This is the last post of the series showing interesting debugging tools, I hope you have found it useful. Don’t miss the custom scripts at the bottom to process GStreamer logs, help you highlight the interesting parts and find the root cause of difficult bugs. Here are also the previous posts of the series:

How to debug pkgconfig

When pkg-config finds the PKG_CONFIG_DEBUG_SPEW env var, it explains all the steps used to resolve the packages:

PKG_CONFIG_DEBUG_SPEW=1 /usr/bin/pkg-config --libs x11

This is useful to know why a particular package isn’t found and what are the default values for PKG_CONFIG_PATH when it’s not defined. For example:

Adding directory '/usr/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pkgconfig' from PKG_CONFIG_PATH
Adding directory '/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig' from PKG_CONFIG_PATH
Adding directory '/usr/local/share/pkgconfig' from PKG_CONFIG_PATH
Adding directory '/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pkgconfig' from PKG_CONFIG_PATH
Adding directory '/usr/lib/pkgconfig' from PKG_CONFIG_PATH
Adding directory '/usr/share/pkgconfig' from PKG_CONFIG_PATH

If we have tuned PKG_CONFIG_PATH, maybe we also want to add the default paths. For example:

SYSROOT=~/sysroot-x86-64
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=${SYSROOT}/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig:${SYSROOT}/usr/lib/pkgconfig
# Add also the standard pkg-config paths to find libraries in the system
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=${PKG_CONFIG_PATH}:/usr/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pkgconfig:\
/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig:/usr/local/share/pkgconfig:/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pkgconfig:\
/usr/lib/pkgconfig:/usr/share/pkgconfig
# This tells pkg-config where the "system" pkg-config dir is. This is useful when cross-compiling for other
# architecture, to avoid pkg-config using the system .pc files and mixing host and target libraries
export PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR=${SYSROOT}/usr/lib
# This could have been used for cross compiling:
#export PKG_CONFIG_SYSROOT_DIR=${SYSROOT}

Man in the middle proxy for WebKit

Sometimes it’s useful to use our own modified/unminified files with a 3rd party service we don’t control. Mitmproxy can be used as a man-in-the-middle proxy, but I haven’t tried it personally yet. What I have tried (with WPE) is this:

  1. Add an /etc/hosts entry to point the host serving the files we want to change to an IP address controlled by us.
  2. Configure a web server to provide the files in the expected path.
  3. Modify the ResourceRequestBase constructor to change the HTTPS requests to HTTP when the hostname matches the target:
ResourceRequestBase(const URL& url, ResourceRequestCachePolicy policy)
    : m_url(url)
    , m_timeoutInterval(s_defaultTimeoutInterval)
    ...
    , m_isAppBound(false)
{
    if (m_url.host().toStringWithoutCopying().containsIgnoringASCIICase(String("out-of-control-service.com"))
        && m_url.protocol().containsIgnoringASCIICase(String("https"))) {
        printf("### %s: URL %s detected, changing from https to http\n",
            __PRETTY_FUNCTION__, m_url.string().utf8().data()); 
        fflush(stdout);
        m_url.setProtocol(String("http"));
    }
}

:bulb: Pro tip: If you have to debug minified/obfuscated JavaScript code and don’t have a deobfuscated version to use in a man-in-the-middle fashion, use http://www.jsnice.org/ to deobfuscate it and get meaningful variable names.

Bandwidth control for a dependent device

If your computer has a “shared internet connection” enabled in Network Manager and provides access to a dependent device , you can control the bandwidth offered to that device. This is useful to trigger quality changes on adaptive streaming videos from services out of your control.

This can be done using tc, the Traffic Control tool from the Linux kernel. You can use this script to automate the process (edit it to suit to your needs).

Useful scripts to process GStreamer logs

I use these scripts in my daily job to look for strange patterns in GStreamer logs that help me to find the cause of the bugs I’m debugging:

  • h: Highlights each expression in the command line in a different color.
  • mgrep: Greps (only) for the lines with the expressions in the command line and highlights each expression in a different color.
  • filter-time: Gets a subset of the log lines between a start and (optionally) an end GStreamer log timestamp.
  • highlight-threads: Highlights each thread in a GStreamer log with a different color. That way it’s easier to follow a thread with the naked eye.
  • remove-ansi-colors: Removes the color codes from a colored GStreamer log.
  • aha: ANSI-HTML-Adapter converts plain text with color codes to HTML, so you can share your GStreamer logs from a web server (eg: for bug discussion). Available in most distros.
  • gstbuffer-leak-analyzer: Analyzes a GStreamer log and shows unbalances in the creation/destruction of GstBuffer and GstMemory objects.

GStreamer WebKit debugging by using external tools (1/2)

In this new post series, I’ll show you how both existing and ad-hoc tools can be helpful to find the root cause of some problems. Here are also the older posts of this series in case you find them useful:

Use strace to know which config/library files are used by a program

If you’re becoming crazy supposing that the program should use some config and it seems to ignore it, just use strace to check what config files, libraries or other kind of files is the program actually using. Use the grep rules you need to refine the search:

$ strace -f -e trace=%file nano 2> >(grep 'nanorc')
access("/etc/nanorc", R_OK)             = 0
access("/usr/share/nano/javascript.nanorc", R_OK) = 0
access("/usr/share/nano/gentoo.nanorc", R_OK) = 0
...

Know which process is killing another one

First, try to strace -e trace=signal -p 1234 the killed process.

If that doesn’t work (eg: because it’s being killed with the uncatchable SIGKILL signal), then you can resort to modifying the kernel source code (signal.c) to log the calls to kill():

SYSCALL_DEFINE2(kill, pid_t, pid, int, sig)
{
    struct task_struct *tsk_p;
    ...
    /* Log SIGKILL */
    if (sig & 0x1F == 9) {
        tsk_p = find_task_by_vpid(pid);

        if (tsk_p) {
            printk(KERN_DEBUG "Sig: %d from pid: %d (%s) to pid: %d (%s)\n",
                sig, current->pid, current->comm, pid, tsk_p->comm);
        } else {
            printk(KERN_DEBUG "Sig: %d from pid: %d (%s) to pid: %d\n",
                sig, current->pid, current->comm, pid);
        }
    }
    ...
}

Wrap gcc/ld/make to tweak build parameters

If you ever find yourself with little time in front of a stubborn build system and, no matter what you try, you can’t get the right flags to the compiler, think about putting something (a wrapper) between the build system and the compiler. Example for g++:

#!/bin/bash
main() {
    # Build up arg[] array with all options to be passed
    # to subcommand.
    i=0
    for opt in "$@"; do
        case "$opt" in
        -O2) ;; # Removes this option
        *)
            arg[i]="$opt" # Keeps the others
            i=$((i+1))
            ;;
        esac
    done
    EXTRA_FLAGS="-O0" # Adds extra option
    echo "g++ ${EXTRA_FLAGS} ${arg[@]}" # >> /tmp/build.log # Logs the command
    /usr/bin/ccache g++ ${EXTRA_FLAGS} "${arg[@]}" # Runs the command
}
main "$@"

Make sure that the wrappers appear earlier than the real commands in your PATH.

The make wrapper can also call remake instead. Remake is fully compatible with make but has features to help debugging compilation and makefile errors.

Analyze the structure of MP4 data

The ISOBMFF Box Structure Viewer online tool allows you to upload an MP4 file and explore its structure.

GStreamer WebKit debugging by instrumenting source code (3/3)

This is the last post on the instrumenting source code series. I hope you to find the tricks below as useful as the previous ones.

In this post I show some more useful debugging tricks. Don’t forget to have a look at the other posts of the series:

Finding memory leaks in a RefCounted subclass

The source code shown below must be placed in the .h where the class to be debugged is defined. It’s written in a way that doesn’t need to rebuild RefCounted.h, so it saves a lot of build time. It logs all refs, unrefs and adoptPtrs, so that any anomaly in the refcounting can be traced and investigated later. To use it, just make your class inherit from LoggedRefCounted instead of RefCounted.

Example output:

void WTF::adopted(WTF::LoggedRefCounted<T>*) [with T = WebCore::MediaSourceClientGStreamerMSE]: this=0x673c07a4, refCount 1
void WTF::adopted(WTF::LoggedRefCounted<T>*) [with T = WebCore::MediaSourceClientGStreamerMSE]: this=0x673c07a4, refCount 1
^^^ Two adopts, this is not good.
void WTF::LoggedRefCounted<T>::ref() [with T = WebCore::MediaSourceClientGStreamerMSE]: this=0x673c07a4, refCount 1 --> ...
void WTF::LoggedRefCounted<T>::ref() [with T = WebCore::MediaSourceClientGStreamerMSE]: this=0x673c07a4, refCount ... --> 2
void WTF::LoggedRefCounted<T>::deref() [with T = WebCore::MediaSourceClientGStreamerMSE]: this=0x673c07a4, refCount 2 --> ...
void WTF::LoggedRefCounted<T>::deref() [with T = WebCore::MediaSourceClientGStreamerMSE]: this=0x673c07a4, refCount ... --> 1
void WTF::adopted(WTF::LoggedRefCounted<T>*) [with T = WebCore::MediaSourceClientGStreamerMSE]: this=0x673c07a4, refCount 1
void WTF::LoggedRefCounted<T>::deref() [with T = WebCore::MediaSourceClientGStreamerMSE]: this=0x673c07a4, refCount 1 --> ...
void WTF::LoggedRefCounted<T>::deref() [with T = WebCore::MediaSourceClientGStreamerMSE]: this=0x673c07a4, refCount 1 --> ...
^^^ Two recursive derefs, not good either.
#include "Logging.h"

namespace WTF {

template<typename T> class LoggedRefCounted : public WTF::RefCounted<T> {
    WTF_MAKE_NONCOPYABLE(LoggedRefCounted); WTF_MAKE_FAST_ALLOCATED;
public:
    void ref() {
        printf("%s: this=%p, refCount %d --> ...\n", __PRETTY_FUNCTION__, this, WTF::RefCounted<T>::refCount()); fflush(stdout);
        WTF::RefCounted<T>::ref();
        printf("%s: this=%p, refCount ... --> %d\n", __PRETTY_FUNCTION__, this, WTF::RefCounted<T>::refCount()); fflush(stdout);
    }

    void deref() {
        printf("%s: this=%p, refCount %d --> ...\n", __PRETTY_FUNCTION__, this, WTF::RefCounted<T>::refCount()); fflush(stdout);
        WTF::RefCounted<T>::deref();
        printf("%s: this=%p, refCount ... --> %d\n", __PRETTY_FUNCTION__, this, WTF::RefCounted<T>::refCount()); fflush(stdout);
    }

protected:
    LoggedRefCounted() { }
    ~LoggedRefCounted() { }
};

template<typename T> inline void adopted(WTF::LoggedRefCounted<T>* object)
{
    printf("%s: this=%p, refCount %d\n", __PRETTY_FUNCTION__, object, (object)?object->refCount():0); fflush(stdout);
    adopted(static_cast<RefCountedBase*>(object));
}

} // Namespace WTF

Pause WebProcess on launch

WebProcessMainGtk and WebProcessMainWPE will sleep for 30 seconds if a special environment variable is defined:

export WEBKIT2_PAUSE_WEB_PROCESS_ON_LAUNCH=1

It only works #if ENABLE(DEVELOPER_MODE), so you might want to remove those ifdefs if you’re building in Release mode.

Log tracers

In big pipelines (e.g. playbin) it can be very hard to find what element is replying to a query or handling an event. Even using gdb can be extremely tedious due to the very high level of recursion. My coworker Alicia commented that using log tracers is more helpful in this case.

GST_TRACERS=log enables additional GST_TRACE() calls all accross GStreamer. The following example logs entries and exits into the query function.

GST_TRACERS=log GST_DEBUG='query:TRACE'

The names of the logging categories are somewhat inconsistent:

  • log (the log tracer itself)
  • GST_BUFFER
  • GST_BUFFER_LIST
  • GST_EVENT
  • GST_MESSAGE
  • GST_STATES
  • GST_PADS
  • GST_ELEMENT_PADS
  • GST_ELEMENT_FACTORY
  • query
  • bin

The log tracer code is in subprojects/gstreamer/plugins/tracers/gstlog.c.

GStreamer WebKit debugging by instrumenting source code (2/3)

In this post I show some more useful debugging tricks. Check also the other posts of the series:

Print current thread id

The thread id is generated by Linux and can take values higher than 1-9, just like PIDs. This thread number is useful to know which function calls are issued by the same thread, avoiding confusion between threads.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <sys/syscall.h>

printf("%s [%d]\n", __PRETTY_FUNCTION__, syscall(SYS_gettid));
fflush(stdout);

Debug GStreamer thread locks

We redefine the GST_OBJECT_LOCK/UNLOCK/TRYLOCK macros to print the calls, compare locks against unlocks, and see who’s not releasing its lock:

#include "wtf/Threading.h"
#define GST_OBJECT_LOCK(obj) do { \
  printf("### [LOCK] %s [%p]\n", __PRETTY_FUNCTION__, &Thread::current()); fflush(stdout); \
  g_mutex_lock(GST_OBJECT_GET_LOCK(obj)); \
} while (0)
#define GST_OBJECT_UNLOCK(obj) do { \
  printf("### [UNLOCK] %s [%p]\n", __PRETTY_FUNCTION__, &Thread::current()); fflush(stdout); \
  g_mutex_unlock(GST_OBJECT_GET_LOCK(obj)); \
} while (0)
#define GST_OBJECT_TRYLOCK(obj) ({ \
  gboolean result = g_mutex_trylock(GST_OBJECT_GET_LOCK(obj)); \
  if (result) { \
   printf("### [LOCK] %s [%p]\n", __PRETTY_FUNCTION__, &Thread::current()); fflush(stdout); \
  } \
  result; \
})

Warning: The statement expression that allows the TRYLOCK macro to return a value will only work on GCC.

There’s a way to know which thread has taken a lock in glib/GStreamer using gdb. First locate the stalled thread:

(gdb) thread 
(gdb) bt
#2  0x74f07416 in pthread_mutex_lock ()
#3  0x7488aec6 in gst_pad_query ()
#4  0x6debebf2 in autoplug_query_allocation ()

(gdb) frame 3
#3  0x7488aec6 in gst_pad_query (pad=pad@entry=0x54a9b8, ...)
4058        GST_PAD_STREAM_LOCK (pad);

Now get the process id (PID) and use the pthread_mutex_t structure to print the Linux thread id that has acquired the lock:

(gdb) call getpid()
$30 = 6321
(gdb) p ((pthread_mutex_t*)pad.stream_rec_lock.p)->__data.__owner
$31 = 6368
(gdb) thread find 6321.6368
Thread 21 has target id 'Thread 6321.6368'

Trace function calls (poor developer version)

If you’re using C++, you can define a tracer class. This is for webkit, but you get the idea:

#define MYTRACER() MyTracer(__PRETTY_FUNCTION__);
class MyTracer {
public:
    MyTracer(const gchar* functionName)
      : m_functionName(functionName) {
      printf("### %s : begin %d\n", m_functionName.utf8().data(), currentThread()); fflush(stdout);
    }
    virtual ~MyTracer() {
        printf("### %s : end %d\n", m_functionName.utf8().data(), currentThread()); fflush(stdout);
    }
private:
    String m_functionName;
};

And use it like this in all the functions you want to trace:

void somefunction() {
  MYTRACER();
  // Some other code...
}

The constructor will log when the execution flow enters into the function and the destructor will log when the flow exits.

Setting breakpoints from C

In the C code, just call raise(SIGINT) (simulate CTRL+C, normally the program would finish).

And then, in a previously attached gdb, after breaking and having debugging all you needed, just continue the execution by ignoring the signal or just plainly continuing:

(gdb) signal 0
(gdb) continue

There’s a way to do the same but attaching gdb after the raise. Use raise(SIGSTOP) instead (simulate CTRL+Z). Then attach gdb, locate the thread calling raise and switch to it:

(gdb) thread apply all bt
[now search for "raise" in the terminal log]
Thread 36 (Thread 1977.2033): #1 0x74f5b3f2 in raise () from /home/enrique/buildroot/output2/staging/lib/libpthread.so.0
(gdb) thread 36

Now, from a terminal, send a continuation signal: kill -SIGCONT 1977. Finally instruct gdb to single-step only the current thread (IMPORTANT!) and run some steps until all the raises have been processed:

(gdb) set scheduler-locking on
(gdb) next    // Repeat several times...

Know the name of a GStreamer function stored in a pointer at runtime

Just use this macro:

GST_DEBUG_FUNCPTR_NAME(func)

Detecting memory leaks in WebKit

RefCountedLeakCounter is a tool class that can help to debug reference leaks by printing this kind of messages when WebKit exits:

  LEAK: 2 XMLHttpRequest
  LEAK: 25 CachedResource
  LEAK: 3820 WebCoreNode

To use it you have to modify the particular class you want to debug:

  • Include wtf/RefCountedLeakCounter.h
  • DEFINE_DEBUG_ONLY_GLOBAL(WTF::RefCountedLeakCounter, myClassCounter, ("MyClass"));
  • In the constructor: myClassCounter.increment()
  • In the destructor: myClassCounter.decrement()

GStreamer WebKit debugging by instrumenting source code (1/3)

This is the continuation of the GStreamer WebKit debugging tricks post series. In the next three posts, I’ll focus on what we can get by doing some little changes to the source code for debugging purposes (known as “instrumenting”), but before, you might want to check the previous posts of the series:

Know all the env vars read by a program by using LD_PRELOAD to intercept libc calls

// File getenv.c
// To compile: gcc -shared -Wall -fPIC -o getenv.so getenv.c -ldl
// To use: export LD_PRELOAD="./getenv.so", then run any program you want
// See http://www.catonmat.net/blog/simple-ld-preload-tutorial-part-2/

#define _GNU_SOURCE

#include <stdio.h>
#include <dlfcn.h>

// This function will take the place of the original getenv() in libc
char *getenv(const char *name) {
 printf("Calling getenv(\"%s\")\n", name);

 char *(*original_getenv)(const char*);
 original_getenv = dlsym(RTLD_NEXT, "getenv");

 return (*original_getenv)(name);
}

See the breakpoints with command example to know how to get the same using gdb. Check also Zan’s libpine for more features.

Track lifetime of GObjects by LD_PRELOADing gobject-list

The gobject-list project, written by Thibault Saunier, is a simple LD_PRELOAD library for tracking the lifetime of GObjects. When loaded into an application, it prints a list of living GObjects on exiting the application (unless the application crashes), and also prints reference count data when it changes. SIGUSR1 or SIGUSR2 can be sent to the application to trigger printing of more information.

Overriding the behaviour of a debugging macro

The usual debugging macros aren’t printing messages? Redefine them to make what you want:

#undef LOG_MEDIA_MESSAGE
#define LOG_MEDIA_MESSAGE(...) do { \
  printf("LOG %s: ", __PRETTY_FUNCTION__); \
  printf(__VA_ARGS__); \
  printf("\n"); \
  fflush(stdout); \
} while(0)

This can be done to enable asserts on demand in WebKit too:

#undef ASSERT
#define ASSERT(assertion) \
  (!(assertion) ? \
      (WTFReportAssertionFailure(__FILE__, __LINE__, WTF_PRETTY_FUNCTION, #assertion), \
       CRASH()) : \
      (void)0)

#undef ASSERT_NOT_REACHED
#define ASSERT_NOT_REACHED() do { \
  WTFReportAssertionFailure(__FILE__, __LINE__, WTF_PRETTY_FUNCTION, 0); \
  CRASH(); \
} while (0)

It may be interesting to enable WebKit LOG() and GStreamer GST_DEBUG() macros only on selected files:

#define LOG(channel, msg, ...) do { \
  printf("%s: ", #channel); \
  printf(msg, ## __VA_ARGS__); \
  printf("\n"); \
  fflush(stdout); \
} while (false)

#define _GST_DEBUG(msg, ...) do { \
  printf("### %s: ", __PRETTY_FUNCTION__); \
  printf(msg, ## __VA_ARGS__); \
  printf("\n"); \
  fflush(stdout); \
} while (false)

Note all the preprocessor trickery used here:

  • First arguments (channel, msg) are captured intependently
  • The remaining args are captured in __VA_ARGS__
  • do while(false) is a trick to avoid {braces} and make the code block work when used in if/then/else one-liners
  • #channel expands LOG(MyChannel,....) as printf("%s: ", "MyChannel"). It’s called “stringification”.
  • ## __VA_ARGS__ expands the variable argument list as a comma-separated list of items, but if the list is empty, it eats the comma after “msg”, preventing syntax errors

Print the compile-time type of an expression

Use typeid(<expression>).name(). Filter the ouput through c++filt -t:

std::vector<char *> v; 
printf("Type: %s\n", typeid(v.begin()).name());

Abusing the compiler to know all the places where a function is called

If you want to know all the places from where the GstClockTime toGstClockTime(float time) function is called, you can convert it to a template function and use static_assert on a wrong datatype like this (in the .h):

template <typename T = float> GstClockTime toGstClockTime(float time) { 
  static_assert(std::is_integral<T>::value,
    "Don't call toGstClockTime(float)!");
  return 0;
}

Note that T=float is different to integer (is_integral). It has nothing to do with the float time parameter declaration.

You will get compile-time errors like this on every place the function is used:

WebKitMediaSourceGStreamer.cpp:474:87:   required from here
GStreamerUtilities.h:84:43: error: static assertion failed: Don't call toGstClockTime(float)!

Use pragma message to print values at compile time

Sometimes is useful to know if a particular define is enabled:

#include <limits.h>

#define _STR(x) #x
#define STR(x) _STR(x)

#pragma message "Int max is " STR(INT_MAX)

#ifdef WHATEVER
#pragma message "Compilation goes by here"
#else
#pragma message "Compilation goes by there"
#endif

...

The code above would generate this output:

test.c:6:9: note: #pragma message: Int max is 0x7fffffff
 #pragma message "Int max is " STR(INT_MAX)
         ^~~~~~~
test.c:11:9: note: #pragma message: Compilation goes by there
 #pragma message "Compilation goes by there"
         ^~~~~~~

GStreamer WebKit debugging tricks using GDB (2/2)

This post is a continuation of a series of blog posts about the most interesting debugging tricks I’ve found while working on GStreamer WebKit on embedded devices. These are the other posts of the series published so far:

Print corrupt stacktraces

In some circumstances you may get stacktraces that eventually stop because of missing symbols or corruption (?? entries).

#3  0x01b8733c in ?? ()
Backtrace stopped: previous frame identical to this frame (corrupt stack?)

However, you can print the stack in a useful way that gives you leads about what was next in the stack:

  • For i386: x/256wa $esp
  • For x86_64: x/256ga $rsp
  • For ARM 32 bit: x/256wa $sp

You may want to enable asm-demangle: set print asm-demangle

Example output, the 3 last lines give interesting info:

0x7ef85550:     0x1b87400       0x2     0x0     0x1b87400
0x7ef85560:     0x0     0x1b87140       0x1b87140       0x759e88a4
0x7ef85570:     0x1b87330       0x759c71a9 <gst_base_sink_change_state+956>     0x140c  0x1b87330
0x7ef85580:     0x759e88a4      0x7ef855b4      0x0     0x7ef855b4
...
0x7ef85830:     0x76dbd6c4 <WebCore::AppendPipeline::resetPipeline()::__PRETTY_FUNCTION__>        0x4     0x3     0x1bfeb50
0x7ef85840:     0x0     0x76d59268      0x75135374      0x75135374
0x7ef85850:     0x76dbd6c4 <WebCore::AppendPipeline::resetPipeline()::__PRETTY_FUNCTION__>        0x1b7e300       0x1d651d0       0x75151b74

More info: 1

Sometimes the symbol names aren’t printed in the stack memdump. You can do this trick to iterate the stack and print the symbols found there (take with a grain of salt!):

(gdb) set $i = 0
(gdb) p/a *((void**)($sp + 4*$i++))

[Press ENTER multiple times to repeat the command]

$46 = 0xb6f9fb17 <_dl_lookup_symbol_x+250>
$58 = 0xb40a9001 <g_log_writer_standard_streams+128>
$142 = 0xb40a877b <g_return_if_fail_warning+22>
$154 = 0xb65a93d5 <WebCore::MediaPlayerPrivateGStreamer::changePipelineState(GstState)+180>
$164 = 0xb65ab4e5 <WebCore::MediaPlayerPrivateGStreamer::playbackPosition() const+420>
...

Many times it’s just a matter of gdb not having loaded the unstripped version of the library. /proc/<PID>/smaps and info proc mappings can help to locate the library providing the missing symbol. Then we can load it by hand.

For instance, for this backtrace:

#0  0x740ad3fc in syscall () from /home/enrique/buildroot-wpe/output/staging/lib/libc.so.6 
#1  0x74375c44 in g_cond_wait () from /home/enrique/buildroot-wpe/output/staging/usr/lib/libglib-2.0.so.0 
#2  0x6cfd0d60 in ?? ()

In a shell, we examine smaps and find out that the unknown piece of code comes from libgstomx:

$ cat /proc/715/smaps
...
6cfc1000-6cff8000 r-xp 00000000 b3:02 785380     /usr/lib/gstreamer-1.0/libgstomx.so
...

Now we load the unstripped .so in gdb and we’re able to see the new symbol afterwards:

(gdb) add-symbol-file /home/enrique/buildroot-wpe/output/build/gst-omx-custom/omx/.libs/libgstomx.so 0x6cfc1000
(gdb) bt
#0  0x740ad3fc in syscall () from /home/enrique/buildroot-wpe/output/staging/lib/libc.so.6
#1  0x74375c44 in g_cond_wait () from /home/enrique/buildroot-wpe/output/staging/usr/lib/libglib-2.0.so.0
#2  0x6cfd0d60 in gst_omx_video_dec_loop (self=0x6e0c8130) at gstomxvideodec.c:1311
#3  0x6e0c8130 in ?? ()

Useful script to prepare the add-symbol-file:

cat /proc/715/smaps | grep '[.]so' | sed -e 's/-[0-9a-f]*//' | { while read ADDR _ _ _ _ LIB; do echo "add-symbol-file $LIB 0x$ADDR"; done; }

More info: 1

The “figuring out corrupt ARM stacktraces” post has some additional info about how to use addr2line to translate memory addresses to function names on systems with a hostile debugging environment.

Debugging a binary without debug symbols

There are times when there’s just no way to get debug symbols working, or where we’re simply debugging on a release version of the software. In those cases, we must directly debug the assembly code. The gdb text user interface (TUI) can be used to examine the disassebled code and the CPU registers. It can be enabled with these commands:

layout asm
layout regs
set print asm-demangle

Some useful keybindings in this mode:

  • Arrows: scroll the disassemble window
  • CTRL+p/n: Navigate history (previously done with up/down arrows)
  • CTRL+b/f: Go backward/forward one character (previously left/right arrows)
  • CTRL+d: Delete character (previously “Del” key)
  • CTRL+a/e: Go to the start/end of the line

This screenshot shows how we can infer that an empty RefPtr is causing a crash in some WebKit code.

Wake up an unresponsive gdb on ARM

Sometimes, when you continue (‘c’) execution on ARM there’s no way to stop it again unless a breakpoint is hit. But there’s a trick to retake the control: just send a harmless signal to the process.

kill -SIGCONT 1234

Know which GStreamer thread id matches with each gdb thread

Sometimes you need to match threads in the GStreamer logs with threads in a running gdb session. The simplest way is to ask it to GThread for each gdb thread:

(gdb) set output-radix 16
(gdb) thread apply all call g_thread_self()

This will print a list of gdb threads and GThread*. We only need to find the one we’re looking for.

Generate a pipeline dump from gdb

If we have a pointer to the pipeline object, we can call the function that dumps the pipeline:

(gdb) call gst_debug_bin_to_dot_file_with_ts((GstBin*)0x15f0078, GST_DEBUG_GRAPH_SHOW_ALL, "debug")

GStreamer WebKit debugging tricks using GDB (1/2)

I’ve been developing and debugging desktop and mobile applications on embedded devices over the last decade or so. The main part of this period I’ve been focused on the multimedia side of the WebKit ports using GStreamer, an area that is a mix of C (glib, GObject and GStreamer) and C++ (WebKit).

Over these years I’ve had to work on ARM embedded devices (mobile phones, set-top-boxes, Raspberry Pi using buildroot) where most of the environment aids and tools we take for granted on a regular x86 Linux desktop just aren’t available. In these situations you have to be imaginative and find your own way to get the work done and debug the issues you find in along the way.

I’ve been writing down the most interesting tricks I’ve found in this journey and I’m sharing them with you in a series of 7 blog posts, one per week. Most of them aren’t mine, and the ones I learnt in the begining of my career can even seem a bit naive, but I find them worth to share anyway. I hope you find them as useful as I do.

Breakpoints with command

You can break on a place, run some command and continue execution. Useful to get logs:

break getenv
command
 # This disables scroll continue messages
 # and supresses output
 silent
 set pagination off
 p (char*)$r0
continue
end

break grl-xml-factory.c:2720 if (data != 0)
command
 call grl_source_get_id(data->source)
 # $ is the last value in the history, the result of
 # the previous call
 call grl_media_set_source (send_item->media, $)
 call grl_media_serialize_extended (send_item->media, 
  GRL_MEDIA_SERIALIZE_FULL)
 continue
end

This idea can be combined with watchpoints and applied to trace reference counting in GObjects and know from which places the refcount is increased and decreased.

Force execution of an if branch

Just wait until the if chooses a branch and then jump to the other one:

6 if (i > 3) {
(gdb) next
7 printf("%d > 3\n", i);
(gdb) break 9
(gdb) jump 9
9 printf("%d <= 3\n", i);
(gdb) next
5 <= 3

Debug glib warnings

If you get a warning message like this:

W/GLib-GObject(18414): g_object_unref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed

the functions involved are: g_return_if_fail_warning(), which calls to g_log(). It’s good to set a breakpoint in any of the two:

break g_log

Another method is to export G_DEBUG=fatal_criticals, which will convert all the criticals in crashes, which will stop the debugger.

Debug GObjects

If you want to inspect the contents of a GObjects that you have in a reference…

(gdb) print web_settings 
$1 = (WebKitWebSettings *) 0x7fffffffd020

you can dereference it…

(gdb) print *web_settings
$2 = {parent_instance = {g_type_instance = {g_class = 0x18}, ref_count = 0, qdata = 0x0}, priv = 0x0}

even if it’s an untyped gpointer…

(gdb) print user_data
(void *) 0x7fffffffd020
(gdb) print *((WebKitWebSettings *)(user_data))
{parent_instance = {g_type_instance = {g_class = 0x18}, ref_count = 0, qdata = 0x0}, priv = 0x0}

To find the type, you can use GType:

(gdb) call (char*)g_type_name( ((GTypeInstance*)0x70d1b038)->g_class->g_type )
$86 = 0x2d7e14 "GstOMXH264Dec-omxh264dec"

Instantiate C++ object from gdb

(gdb) call malloc(sizeof(std::string))
$1 = (void *) 0x91a6a0
(gdb) call ((std::string*)0x91a6a0)->basic_string()
(gdb) call ((std::string*)0x91a6a0)->assign("Hello, World")
$2 = (std::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> > &) @0x91a6a0: {static npos = <optimized out>, _M_dataplus = {<std::allocator<char>> = {<__gnu_cxx::new_allocator<char>> = {<No data fields>}, <No data fields>}, _M_p = 0x91a6f8 "Hello, World"}}
(gdb) call SomeFunctionThatTakesAConstStringRef(*(const std::string*)0x91a6a0)

See: 1 and 2

Developing on WebKitGTK with Qt Creator 4.12.2

After the latest migration of WebKitGTK test bots to use the new SDK based on Flatpak, the old development environment based on jhbuild became deprecated. It can still be used with export WEBKIT_JHBUILD=1, though, but support for this way of working will gradually fade out.

I used to work on a chroot because I love the advantages of having an isolated and self-contained environment, but an issue in the way bubblewrap manages mountpoints basically made it impossible to use the new SDK from a chroot. It was time for me to update my development environment to the new ages and have it working in my main Kubuntu 18.04 distro.

My mail goal was to have a comfortable IDE that follows standard GUI conventions (that is, no emacs nor vim) and has code indexing features that (more or less) work with the WebKit codebase. Qt Creator was providing all that to me in the old chroot environment thanks to some configuration tricks by Alicia, so it should be good for the new one.

I preferred to use the Qt Creator 4.12.2 offline installer for Linux, so I can download exactly the same version in the future in case I need it, but other platforms and versions are also available.

The WebKit source code can be downloaded as always using git:

git clone git.webkit.org/WebKit.git

It’s useful to add WebKit/Tools/Scripts and WebKit/Tools/gtk to your PATH, as well as any other custom tools you may have. You can customize your $HOME/.bashrc for that, but I prefer to have an env.sh environment script to be sourced from the current shell when I want to enter into my development environment (by running webkit). If you’re going to use it too, remember to adjust to your needs the paths used there.

Even if you have a pretty recent distro, it’s still interesting to have the latests Flatpak tools. Add Alex Larsson’s PPA to your apt sources:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:alexlarsson/flatpak

In order to ensure that your distro has all the packages that webkit requires and to install the WebKit SDK, you have to run these commands (I omit the full path). Downloading the Flatpak modules will take a while, but at least you won’t need to build everything from scratch. You will need to do this again from time to time, every time the WebKit base dependencies change:

install-dependencies
update-webkitgtk-libs

Now just build WebKit and check that MiniBrowser works:

build-webkit --gtk
run-minibrowser --gtk

I have automated the previous steps as go full-rebuild and runtest.sh.

This build process should have generated a WebKit/WebKitBuild/GTK/Release/compile_commands.json
file with the right parameters and paths used to build each compilation unit in the project. This file can be leveraged by Qt Creator to get the right include paths and build flags after some preprocessing to translate the paths that make sense from inside Flatpak to paths that make sense from the perspective of your main distro. I wrote compile_commands.sh to take care of those transformations. It can be run manually or automatically when calling go full-rebuild or go update.

The WebKit way of managing includes is a bit weird. Most of the cpp files include config.h and, only after that, they include the header file related to the cpp file. Those header files depend on defines declared transitively when including config.h, but that file isn’t directly included by the header file. This breaks the intuitive rule of “headers should include any other header they depend on” and, among other things, completely confuse code indexers. So, in order to give the Qt Creator code indexer a hand, the compile_commands.sh script pre-includes WebKit.config for every file and includes config.h from it.

With all the needed pieces in place, it’s time to import the project into Qt Creator. To do that, click File → Open File or Project, and then select the compile_commands.json file that compile_commands.sh should have generated in the WebKit main directory.

Now make sure that Qt Creator has the right plugins enabled in Help → About Plugins…. Specifically: GenericProjectManager, ClangCodeModel, ClassView, CppEditor, CppTools, ClangTools, TextEditor and LanguageClient (more on that later).

With this setup, after a brief initial indexing time, you will have support for features like Switch header/source (F4), Follow symbol under cursor (F2), shading of disabled if-endif blocks, auto variable type resolving and code outline. There are some oddities of compile_commands.json based projects, though. There are no compilation units in that file for header files, so indexing features for them only work sometimes. For instance, you can switch from a method implementation in the cpp file to its declaration in the header file, but not the opposite. Also, you won’t see all the source files under the Projects view, only the compilation units, which are often just a bunch of UnifiedSource-*.cpp files. That’s why I prefer to use the File System view.

Additional features like Open Type Hierarchy (Ctrl+Shift+T) and Find References to Symbol Under Cursor (Ctrl+Shift+U) are only available when a Language Client for Language Server Protocol is configured. Fortunately, the new WebKit SDK comes with the ccls C/C++/Objective-C language server included. To configure it, open Tools → Options… → Language Client and add a new item with the following properties:

  • Name: ccls
  • Language: *.c;.cpp;*.h
  • Startup behaviour: Always On
  • Executable: /home/enrique/work/webkit/WebKit/Tools/Scripts/webkit-flatpak
  • Arguments: --gtk -c ccls --index=/home/enrique/work/webkit/WebKit

Some “LanguageClient ccls: Unexpectedly finished. Restarting in 5 seconds.” errors will appear in the General Messages panel after configuring the language client and every time you launch Qt Creator. It’s just ccls taking its time to index the whole source code. It’s “normal”, don’t worry about it. Things will get stable and start to work after some minutes.

Due to the way the Locator file indexer works in Qt Creator, it can become confused, run out of memory and die if it finds cycles in the project file tree. This is common when using Flatpak and running the MiniBrowser or the tests, since /proc and other large filesystems are accessible from inside WebKit/WebKitBuild. To avoid that, open Tools → Options… → Environment → Locator and set Refresh interval to 0 min.

I also prefer to call my own custom build and run scripts (go and runtest.sh) instead of letting Qt Creator build the project with the default builders and mess everything. To do that, from the Projects mode (Ctrl+5), click on Build & Run → Desktop → Build and edit the build configuration to be like this:

  • Build directory: /home/enrique/work/webkit/WebKit
  • Add build step → Custom process step
    • Command: go (no absolute route because I have it in my PATH)
    • Arguments:
    • Working directory: /home/enrique/work/webkit/WebKit

Then, for Build & Run → Desktop → Run, use these options:

  • Deployment: No deploy steps
  • Run:
    • Run configuration: Custom Executable → Add
      • Executable: runtest.sh
      • Command line arguments:
      • Working directory:

With these configuration you can build the project with Ctrl+B and run it with Ctrl+R.

I think I’m not forgetting anything more regarding environment setup. With the instructions in this post you can end up with a pretty complete IDE. Here’s a screenshot of it working in its full glory:

Anyway, to be honest, nothing will ever reach the level of code indexing features I got with Eclipse some years ago. I could find usages of a variable/attribute and know where it was being read, written or read-written. Unfortunately, that environment stopped working for me long ago, so Qt Creator has been the best I’ve managed to get for a while.

Properly configured web based indexers such as the Searchfox instance configured in Igalia can also be useful alternatives to a local setup, although they lack features such as type hierarchy.

I hope you’ve found this post useful in case you try to setup an environment similar to the one described here. Enjoy!

Attending the GStreamer Conference 2017

This weekend I’ll be in Node5 (Prague) presenting our Media Source Extensions platform implementation work in WebKit using GStreamer.

The Media Source Extensions HTML5 specification allows JavaScript to generate media streams for playback and lets the web page have more control on complex use cases such as adaptive streaming.

My plan for the talk is to start with a brief introduction about the motivation and basic usage of MSE. Next I’ll show a design overview of the WebKit implementation of the spec. Then we’ll go through the iterative evolution of the GStreamer platform-specific parts, as well as its implementation quirks and challenges faced during the development. The talk continues with a demo, some clues about the future work and a final round of questions.

Our recent MSE work has been on desktop WebKitGTK+ (the WebKit version powering the Epiphany, aka: GNOME Web), but we also have MSE working on WPE and optimized for a Raspberry Pi 2. We will be showing it in the Igalia booth, in case you want to see it working live.

I’ll be also attending the GStreamer Hackfest the days before. There I plan to work on webm support in MSE, focusing on any issue in the Matroska demuxer or the vp9/opus/vorbis decoders breaking our use cases.

See you there!

UPDATE 2017-10-22:

The talk slides are available at https://eocanha.org/talks/gstconf2017/gstconf-2017-mse.pdf and the video is available at https://gstconf.ubicast.tv/videos/media-source-extension-on-webkit (the rest of the talks here).