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rustc-dev-guide/src/compiler-debugging.md

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Note: This is copied from the rust-forge. If anything needs updating, please open an issue or make a PR on the github repo.

Debugging the compiler

Here are a few tips to debug the compiler:

Getting a backtrace

When you have an ICE (panic in the compiler), you can set RUST_BACKTRACE=1 to get the stack trace of the panic! like in normal Rust programs. IIRC backtraces don't work on Mac and on MinGW, sorry. If you have trouble or the backtraces are full of unknown, you might want to find some way to use Linux or MSVC on Windows.

In the default configuration, you don't have line numbers enabled, so the backtrace looks like this:

stack backtrace:
   0: std::sys::imp::backtrace::tracing::imp::unwind_backtrace
   1: std::sys_common::backtrace::_print
   2: std::panicking::default_hook::{{closure}}
   3: std::panicking::default_hook
   4: std::panicking::rust_panic_with_hook
   5: std::panicking::begin_panic
   (~~~~ LINES REMOVED BY ME FOR BREVITY ~~~~)
  32: rustc_typeck::check_crate
  33: <std::thread::local::LocalKey<T>>::with
  34: <std::thread::local::LocalKey<T>>::with
  35: rustc::ty::context::TyCtxt::create_and_enter
  36: rustc_driver::driver::compile_input
  37: rustc_driver::run_compiler

If you want line numbers for the stack trace, you can enable debuginfo-lines=true or debuginfo=true in your config.toml and rebuild the compiler. Then the backtrace will look like this:

stack backtrace:
   (~~~~ LINES REMOVED BY ME FOR BREVITY ~~~~)
             at /home/user/rust/src/librustc_typeck/check/cast.rs:110
   7: rustc_typeck::check::cast::CastCheck::check
             at /home/user/rust/src/librustc_typeck/check/cast.rs:572
             at /home/user/rust/src/librustc_typeck/check/cast.rs:460
             at /home/user/rust/src/librustc_typeck/check/cast.rs:370
   (~~~~ LINES REMOVED BY ME FOR BREVITY ~~~~)
  33: rustc_driver::driver::compile_input
             at /home/user/rust/src/librustc_driver/driver.rs:1010
             at /home/user/rust/src/librustc_driver/driver.rs:212
  34: rustc_driver::run_compiler
             at /home/user/rust/src/librustc_driver/lib.rs:253

Getting a backtrace for errors

If you want to get a backtrace to the point where the compiler emits an error message, you can pass the -Z treat-err-as-bug, which will make the compiler panic on the first error it sees.

This can also help when debugging delay_span_bug calls - it will make the first delay_span_bug call panic, which will give you a useful backtrace.

For example:

$ cat error.rs
fn main() {
    1 + ();
}

$ ./build/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/stage1/bin/rustc error.rs
error[E0277]: the trait bound `{integer}: std::ops::Add<()>` is not satisfied
 --> error.rs:2:7
  |
2 |     1 + ();
  |       ^ no implementation for `{integer} + ()`
  |
  = help: the trait `std::ops::Add<()>` is not implemented for `{integer}`

error: aborting due to previous error

$ # Now, where does the error above come from?
$ RUST_BACKTRACE=1 \
    ./build/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/stage1/bin/rustc \
    error.rs \
    -Z treat-err-as-bug
error[E0277]: the trait bound `{integer}: std::ops::Add<()>` is not satisfied
 --> error.rs:2:7
  |
2 |     1 + ();
  |       ^ no implementation for `{integer} + ()`
  |
  = help: the trait `std::ops::Add<()>` is not implemented for `{integer}`

error: internal compiler error: unexpected panic

note: the compiler unexpectedly panicked. this is a bug.

note: we would appreciate a bug report: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#bug-reports

note: rustc 1.24.0-dev running on x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu

note: run with `RUST_BACKTRACE=1` for a backtrace

thread 'rustc' panicked at 'encountered error with `-Z treat_err_as_bug',
/home/user/rust/src/librustc_errors/lib.rs:411:12
note: Some details are omitted, run with `RUST_BACKTRACE=full` for a verbose
backtrace.
stack backtrace:
  (~~~ IRRELEVANT PART OF BACKTRACE REMOVED BY ME ~~~)
   7: rustc::traits::error_reporting::<impl rustc::infer::InferCtxt<'a, 'gcx,
             'tcx>>::report_selection_error
             at /home/user/rust/src/librustc/traits/error_reporting.rs:823
   8: rustc::traits::error_reporting::<impl rustc::infer::InferCtxt<'a, 'gcx,
             'tcx>>::report_fulfillment_errors
             at /home/user/rust/src/librustc/traits/error_reporting.rs:160
             at /home/user/rust/src/librustc/traits/error_reporting.rs:112
   9: rustc_typeck::check::FnCtxt::select_obligations_where_possible
             at /home/user/rust/src/librustc_typeck/check/mod.rs:2192
  (~~~ IRRELEVANT PART OF BACKTRACE REMOVED BY ME ~~~)
  36: rustc_driver::run_compiler
             at /home/user/rust/src/librustc_driver/lib.rs:253
$ # Cool, now I have a backtrace for the error

Getting logging output

The compiler has a lot of debug! calls, which print out logging information at many points. These are very useful to at least narrow down the location of a bug if not to find it entirely, or just to orient yourself as to why the compiler is doing a particular thing.

To see the logs, you need to set the RUST_LOG environment variable to your log filter, e.g. to get the logs for a specific module, you can run the compiler as RUST_LOG=module::path rustc my-file.rs. The Rust logs are powered by env-logger, and you can look at the docs linked there to see the full RUST_LOG syntax. All debug! output will then appear in standard error.

Note that unless you use a very strict filter, the logger will emit a lot of output - so it's typically a good idea to pipe standard error to a file and look at the log output with a text editor.

So to put it together.

# This puts the output of all debug calls in `librustc/traits` into
# standard error, which might fill your console backscroll.
$ RUST_LOG=rustc::traits rustc +local my-file.rs

# This puts the output of all debug calls in `librustc/traits` in
# `traits-log`, so you can then see it with a text editor.
$ RUST_LOG=rustc::traits rustc +local my-file.rs 2>traits-log

# Not recommended. This will show the output of all `debug!` calls
# in the Rust compiler, and there are a *lot* of them, so it will be
# hard to find anything.
$ RUST_LOG=debug rustc +local my-file.rs 2>all-log

# This will show the output of all `info!` calls in `rustc_trans`.
#
# There's an `info!` statement in `trans_instance` that outputs
# every function that is translated. This is useful to find out
# which function triggers an LLVM assertion, and this is an `info!`
# log rather than a `debug!` log so it will work on the official
# compilers.
$ RUST_LOG=rustc_trans=info rustc +local my-file.rs

While calls to info! are included in every build of the compiler, calls to debug! are only included in the program if the debug-assertions=yes is turned on in config.toml (it is turned off by default), so if you don't see DEBUG logs, especially if you run the compiler with RUST_LOG=rustc rustc some.rs and only see INFO logs, make sure that debug-assertions=yes is turned on in your config.toml.

I also think that in some cases just setting it will not trigger a rebuild, so if you changed it and you already have a compiler built, you might want to call x.py clean to force one.

Logging etiquette

Because calls to debug! are removed by default, in most cases, don't worry about adding "unnecessary" calls to debug! and leaving them in code you commit - they won't slow down the performance of what we ship, and if they helped you pinning down a bug, they will probably help someone else with a different one.

However, there are still a few concerns that you might care about:

Expensive operations in logs

A note of caution: the expressions within the debug! call are run whenever RUST_LOG is set, even if the filter would exclude the log. This means that if in the module rustc::foo you have a statement

debug!("{:?}", random_operation(tcx));

Then if someone runs a debug rustc with RUST_LOG=rustc::bar, then random_operation() will still run - even while it's output will never be needed!

This means that you should not put anything too expensive or likely to crash there - that would annoy anyone who wants to use logging for their own module. Note that if RUST_LOG is unset (the default), then the code will not run - this means that if your logging code panics, then no-one will know it until someone tries to use logging to find another bug.

If you need to do an expensive operation in a log, be aware that while log expressions are evaluated even if logging is not enabled in your module, they are not formatted unless it is. This means you can put your expensive/crashy operations inside an fmt::Debug impl, and they will not be run unless your log is enabled:

use std::fmt;

struct ExpensiveOperationContainer<'a, 'gcx, 'tcx>
    where 'tcx: 'gcx, 'a: 'tcx
{
    tcx: TyCtxt<'a, 'gcx, 'tcx>
}

impl<'a, 'gcx, 'tcx> fmt::Debug for ExpensiveOperationContainer<'a, 'gcx, 'tcx> {
    fn fmt(&self, fmt: &mut fmt::Formatter) -> fmt::Result {
        let value = random_operation(tcx);
        fmt::Debug::fmt(&value, fmt)
    }
}

debug!("{:?}", ExpensiveOperationContainer { tcx });

Formatting Graphviz output (.dot files)

Some compiler options for debugging specific features yield graphviz graphs - e.g. the #[rustc_mir(borrowck_graphviz_postflow="suffix.dot")] attribute dumps various borrow-checker dataflow graphs.

These all produce .dot files. To view these files, install graphviz (e.g. apt-get install graphviz) and then run the following commands:

$ dot -T pdf maybe_init_suffix.dot > maybe_init_suffix.pdf
$ firefox maybe_init_suffix.pdf # Or your favorite pdf viewer

Debugging LLVM

NOTE: If you are looking for info about code generation, please see this chapter instead.

This section is about debugging compiler bugs in code generation (e.g. why the compiler generated some piece of code or crashed in LLVM). LLVM is a big project on its own that probably needs to have its own debugging document (not that I could find one). But here are some tips that are important in a rustc context:

As a general rule, compilers generate lots of information from analyzing code. Thus, a useful first step is usually to find a minimal example. One way to do this is to

  1. create a new crate that reproduces the issue (e.g. adding whatever crate is at fault as a dependency, and using it from there)

  2. minimize the crate by removing external dependencies; that is, moving everything relevant to the new crate

  3. further minimize the issue by making the code shorter (there are tools that help with this like creduce)

The official compilers (including nightlies) have LLVM assertions disabled, which means that LLVM assertion failures can show up as compiler crashes (not ICEs but "real" crashes) and other sorts of weird behavior. If you are encountering these, it is a good idea to try using a compiler with LLVM assertions enabled - either an "alt" nightly or a compiler you build yourself by setting [llvm] assertions=true in your config.toml - and see whether anything turns up.

The rustc build process builds the LLVM tools into ./build/<host-triple>/llvm/bin. They can be called directly.

The default rustc compilation pipeline has multiple codegen units, which is hard to replicate manually and means that LLVM is called multiple times in parallel. If you can get away with it (i.e. if it doesn't make your bug disappear), passing -C codegen-units=1 to rustc will make debugging easier.

To rustc to generate LLVM IR, you need to pass the --emit=llvm-ir flag. If you are building via cargo, use the RUSTFLAGS environment variable (e.g. RUSTFLAGS='--emit=llvm-ir'). This causes rustc to spit out LLVM IR into the target directory.

cargo llvm-ir [options] path spits out the LLVM IR for a particular function at path. (cargo install cargo-asm installs cargo asm and cargo llvm-ir). --build-type=debug emits code for debug builds. There are also other useful options. Also, debug info in LLVM IR can clutter the output a lot: RUSTFLAGS="-C debuginfo=0" is really useful.

RUSTFLAGS="-C save-temps" outputs LLVM bitcode (not the same as IR) at different stages during compilation, which is sometimes useful. One just needs to convert the bitcode files to .ll files using llvm-dis which should be in the target local compilation of rustc.

If you want to play with the optimization pipeline, you can use the opt tool from ./build/<host-triple>/llvm/bin/ with the LLVM IR emitted by rustc. Note that rustc emits different IR depending on whether -O is enabled, even without LLVM's optimizations, so if you want to play with the IR rustc emits, you should:

$ rustc +local my-file.rs --emit=llvm-ir -O -C no-prepopulate-passes \
    -C codegen-units=1
$ OPT=./build/$TRIPLE/llvm/bin/opt
$ $OPT -S -O2 < my-file.ll > my

If you just want to get the LLVM IR during the LLVM pipeline, to e.g. see which IR causes an optimization-time assertion to fail, or to see when LLVM performs a particular optimization, you can pass the rustc flag -C llvm-args=-print-after-all, and possibly add -C llvm-args='-filter-print-funcs=EXACT_FUNCTION_NAME (e.g. -C llvm-args='-filter-print-funcs=_ZN11collections3str21_$LT$impl$u20$str$GT$\ 7replace17hbe10ea2e7c809b0bE').

That produces a lot of output into standard error, so you'll want to pipe that to some file. Also, if you are using neither -filter-print-funcs nor -C codegen-units=1, then, because the multiple codegen units run in parallel, the printouts will mix together and you won't be able to read anything.

If you want just the IR for a specific function (say, you want to see why it causes an assertion or doesn't optimize correctly), you can use llvm-extract, e.g.

$ ./build/$TRIPLE/llvm/bin/llvm-extract \
    -func='_ZN11collections3str21_$LT$impl$u20$str$GT$7replace17hbe10ea2e7c809b0bE' \
    -S \
    < unextracted.ll \
    > extracted.ll

Filing LLVM bug reports

When filing an LLVM bug report, you will probably want some sort of minimal working example that demonstrates the problem. The Godbolt compiler explorer is really helpful for this.

  1. Once you have some LLVM IR for the problematic code (see above), you can create a minimal working example with Godbolt. Go to gcc.godbolt.org.

  2. Choose LLVM-IR as programming language.

  3. Use llc to compile the IR to a particular target as is:

    • There are some useful flags: -mattr enables target features, -march= selects the target, -mcpu= selects the CPU, etc.
    • Commands like llc -march=help output all architectures available, which is useful because sometimes the Rust arch names and the LLVM names do not match.
    • If you have compiled rustc yourself somewhere, in the target directory you have binaries for llc, opt, etc.

  4. If you want to optimize the LLVM-IR, you can use opt to see how the LLVM optimizations transform it.

  5. Once you have a godbolt link demonstrating the issue, it is pretty easy to fill in an LLVM bug.