## LART Introspection (26. 6. 2019)

Introspection is, in general, the ability of a program to access information
about itself at runtime. In our context, this allows DiOS to examine metadata
of functions, LLVM instructions and their registers, and (some specifically
named) global variables.

- main sources:
  - `dios/include/sys/metadata.h`
  - `dios/libc/sys/metadata.cpp`
  - `lart/divine/functionmeta.cpp`
  - `lart/divine/cppeh.h`
  - `lart/divine/cpplsda.cpp`
- aux sources:
  - `dios/arch/divm/metadata.cpp`
  - `dios/arch/klee/metadata.c`
  - `lart/divine/metadata.h`
  - `lart/support/metadata.h`

### Overview

We will begin our seminar by looking at a brand new `Introspection` section in
`dios/README`, which contains the basic overview of the DiOS side of our
introspection system.

### Metadata structures

Now that we have a general understanding of the structure of the system, let's
look at how it's implemented.

The first stop is `dios/include/sys/metadata.h`.
The main point of interest here are the metadata structs:
- _MD_InstInfo
- _MD_Function
- _MD_RegInfo
- _MD_Global

Of course, we need to get to the desired struct somehow, so let's look at the
query functions in `dios/libc/sys/metadata.cpp` and the platform-dependent ones
over at `dios/arch/{divm, klee}/metadata.{cpp, c}`.

### Metadata generation

We now know how metadata are accessible by DiOS. Now we will look at how they
are generated and hooked into the bitcode.

This happens in `lart/divine/functionmeta.cpp`, where the `IndexFunctions` pass
lives. This is the source of all of the metadata that we have seen so far, so
let's look at it now.

### Exception handling support (LSDA metadata generation)

And now for something completely different...
The general overview of exception handling is provided yet again in
`dios/README`, this time in the section `Exception handling support`.

With this information in mind, let's look at `lart/divine/cpplsda.cpp`, where
we will find the `AddCppLSDA` pass responsible for injection of LSDA areas into
our functions. A single helper function is also defined in
`lart/support/metadata.h`, so let's take a quick look at it.

However, this pass relies on a `CppEhTab` struct over at `lart/divine/cppeh.h`.
We will head there now and all the mysteries of exception handling shall be
unraveled to us (well, almost all). Our final stop will be a beautiful
template-metaprogramming-filled file `lart/divine/metadata.h` which provides
some support to our `CppEhTab` (it provides type-to-char conversion functions).