in thumb mode, r7 is the ABI frame pointer register, and unless frame
pointer is disabled, gcc insists on treating it as a fixed register,
refusing to spill it to satisfy constraints. unfortunately, r7 is also
used in the syscall ABI for passing the syscall number.
up til now we just treated this as a requirement to disable frame
pointer when generating code as thumb, but it turns out gcc forcibly
enables frame pointer, and the fixed register constraint that goes
with it, for functions which contain VLAs. this produces an
unacceptable arch-specific constraint that (non-arm-specific) source
files making syscalls cannot use VLAs.
as a workaround, avoid r7 register constraints when producing thumb
code and instead save/restore r7 in a temp register as part of the asm
block. at some point we may want/need to support armv6-m/thumb1, so
the asm has been tweaked to be thumb1-compatible while also
near-optimal for thumb2: it allows the temp and/or syscall number to
be in high registers (necessary since r0-r5 may all be used for
syscalll args) and in thumb2 mode allows the syscall number to be an
8-bit immediate.
Rich Felker
e3c682ab52