Using and Porting GNU CC

16.7.3: Eliminating Frame Pointer and Arg Pointer

FRAME_POINTER_REQUIRED

A C expression which is nonzero if a function must have and use a frame pointer. This expression is evaluated in the reload pass. If its value is nonzero the function will have a frame pointer.

The expression can in principle examine the current function and decide according to the facts, but on most machines the constant 0 or the constant 1 suffices. Use 0 when the machine allows code to be generated with no frame pointer, and doing so saves some time or space. Use 1 when there is no possible advantage to avoiding a frame pointer.

In certain cases, the compiler does not know how to produce valid code without a frame pointer. The compiler recognizes those cases and automatically gives the function a frame pointer regardless of what FRAME_POINTER_REQUIRED says. You don't need to worry about them.

In a function that does not require a frame pointer, the frame pointer register can be allocated for ordinary usage, unless you mark it as a fixed register. See FIXED_REGISTERS for more information.

INITIAL_FRAME_POINTER_OFFSET (depth-var)

A C statement to store in the variable depth-var the difference between the frame pointer and the stack pointer values immediately after the function prologue. The value would be computed from information such as the result of get_frame_size () and the tables of registers regs_ever_live and call_used_regs.

If ELIMINABLE_REGS is defined, this macro will be not be used and need not be defined. Otherwise, it must be defined even if FRAME_POINTER_REQUIRED is defined to always be true; in that case, you may set depth-var to anything.

ELIMINABLE_REGS

If defined, this macro specifies a table of register pairs used to eliminate unneeded registers that point into the stack frame. If it is not defined, the only elimination attempted by the compiler is to replace references to the frame pointer with references to the stack pointer.

The definition of this macro is a list of structure initializations, each of which specifies an original and replacement register.

On some machines, the position of the argument pointer is not known until the compilation is completed. In such a case, a separate hard register must be used for the argument pointer. This register can be eliminated by replacing it with either the frame pointer or the argument pointer, depending on whether or not the frame pointer has been eliminated.

In this case, you might specify:

#define ELIMINABLE_REGS  \
{{ARG_POINTER_REGNUM, STACK_POINTER_REGNUM}, \
 {ARG_POINTER_REGNUM, FRAME_POINTER_REGNUM}, \
 {FRAME_POINTER_REGNUM, STACK_POINTER_REGNUM}}

Note that the elimination of the argument pointer with the stack pointer is specified first since that is the preferred elimination.

CAN_ELIMINATE (from-reg, to-reg)

A C expression that returns non-zero if the compiler is allowed to try to replace register number from-reg with register number to-reg. This macro need only be defined if ELIMINABLE_REGS is defined, and will usually be the constant 1, since most of the cases preventing register elimination are things that the compiler already knows about.

INITIAL_ELIMINATION_OFFSET (from-reg, to-reg, offset-var)

This macro is similar to INITIAL_FRAME_POINTER_OFFSET. It specifies the initial difference between the specified pair of registers. This macro must be defined if ELIMINABLE_REGS is defined.

LONGJMP_RESTORE_FROM_STACK

Define this macro if the longjmp function restores registers from the stack frames, rather than from those saved specifically by setjmp. Certain quantities must not be kept in registers across a call to setjmp on such machines.