Let's say I am compiling for a target that has TARGET_PAD_SHORT_FUNCTION (example: i386 Atom) and that the compilation flags are -fPIE -fstack-protector.
For certain functions, the starting code sequence will look like the following: function: call __i686.get_pc_thunk.bx addl $_GLOBAL_OFFSET_TABLE_, %ebx movl %gs:20, %eax # Stack-guard init movl %eax, -12(%ebp) # Stack-guard init __i686.get_pc_thunk.bx: .LFB2: nop nop nop nop nop nop nop nop movl (%esp), %ebx ret You can generate this by running the following: echo "int global; void function(){global = 2;} int main(){function(); }" | ./bin/gcc -fPIE -S -fstack-protector-all -mtune=atom -march=atom -m32 -xc -o /dev/stdout - | egrep -A10 "function:|.bx:" Now, what I want to do is move stack guard initialization part (consisting of the two instructions I have commented as "Stack-guard init" into get_pc_thunk.bx for those functions that have both the stack guard and a call to get_pc_thunk.bx. The compiler should generate a "stack_guarded_get_pc_thunk.bx" that will do move the %gs:20 value to the correction location on the stack instead of executing nops. In this way some useful work can be done instead of nops. As far as I understand, the stack guard part is done in function.c (called by cfgexpand.c) which adds the prologue and epilogue to the protected functions. At this point, we are still target-independent. The get_pc_thunk.bx is generated by the target-specific config/i386/i386.c part (ix86_file_end). How should I go about creating such a patch that should: 1. Check if a function has both stack guard as well as access to a global (which would result in having the get_pc_thunk call). 2. Remove the stack guard prologue instructions. 3. Replace calls to get_pc_thunk.bx in that function to stack_guarded_get_pc_thunk. Specifically, what phase should this be done in? Thanks,