Add document of changes between Android versions.

This document does not list every change in the unwinder between
Android versions. Instead it attempts to only include information
that someone building an app targeting a specific version of Android
might need to know to make sure their app can unwind properly.
It also tries to describe the way that stacktraces might be displayed
differently between Android versions.

Test: NA
Change-Id: I4029053f763f3471f7ddb5da9b1de2d325ead455
This commit is contained in:
Christopher Ferris 2019-10-15 15:07:36 -07:00
parent f5bad500f3
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# Unwinder Support Per Android Release
This document describes the changes in the way the libunwindstack
unwinder works on different Android versions. It does not describe
every change in the code made between different versions, but is
meant to allow an app developer to know what might be supported
on different versions. It also describes the different way an unwind
will display on different versions of Android.
## Android P
libunwindstack was first introduced in Android P.
* Supports up to and including Dwarf 4 unwinding information.
See http://dwarfstd.org/ for Dwarf standards.
* Supports Arm exidx unwinding.
* Supports the gdb JIT unwinding interface, which is how ART creates unwinding
information for the JIT'd Java frames.
* Supports special frames added to represent an ART Java interpreter frame.
ART has marked the dex pc using cfi information that the unwinder
understands and handles by adding a new frame in the stacktrace.
## Note
By default, lld creates two separate maps of the elf in memory, one read-only
and one read/executable. The libunwindstack on P and the unwinder on older
versions of Android will not unwind properly in this case. For apps that
target Android P or older, make sure that `-Wl,--no-rosegment` is
included in linker arguments when using lld.
## Android Q
* Fix bug (b/109824792) that handled load bias data incorrectly when
FDEs use pc relative addressing in the eh\_frame\_hdr.
Unfortunately, this wasn't fixed correctly in Q since it assumes
that the bias is coming from the program header for the executable
load. The real fix was to use the bias from the actual section data and
is not completely fixed until Android R. For apps targeting Android Q,
if it is being compiled with the llvm linker lld, it might be necessary
to add the linker option `-Wl,-zseparate-code` to avoid creating an elf
created this way.
* Change the way the exidx section offset is found (b/110704153). Before
the p\_vaddr value from the program header minus the load bias was used
to find the start of the exidx data. Changed to use the p\_offset since
it doesn't require any load bias manipulations.
* Fix bug handling of dwarf sections without any header (b/110235461).
Previously, the code assumed that FDEs are non-overlapping, and the FDEs
are always in sorted order from low pc to high pc. Thus the code would
read the entire set of CIEs/FDEs and then do a binary search to find
the appropriate FDE for a given pc. Now the code does a sequential read
and stops when it finds the FDE for a pc. It also understands the
overlapping FDEs, so find the first FDE that matches a pc. In practice,
elf files with this format only ever occurs if the file was generated
without an eh\_frame/eh\_frame\_hdr section and only a debug\_frame. The
other way this has been observed is when running simpleperf to unwind since
sometimes there is not enough information in the eh\_frame for all points
in the executable. On Android P, this would result in some incorrect
unwinds coming from simpleperf. Nearly all crashes from Android P should
be correct since the eh\_frame information was enough to do the unwind
properly.
* Be permissive of badly formed elf files. Previously, any detected error
would result in unwinds stopping even if there is enough valid information
to do an unwind.
* The code now allows program header/section header offsets to point
to unreadable memory. As long as the code can find the unwind tables,
that is good enough.
* The code allows program headers/section headers to be missing.
* Allow a symbol table section header to point to invalid symbol table
values.
* Support for the linker read-only segment option (b/109657296).
This is a feature of lld whereby there are two sections that
contain elf data. The first is read-only and contains the elf header data,
and the second is read-execute or execute only that
contains the executable code from the elf. Before this, the unwinder
always assumed that there was only a single read-execute section that
contained the elf header data and the executable code.
* Build ID information for elf objects added. This will display the
NT\_GNU\_BUILD\_ID note found in elf files. This information can be used
to identify the exact version of a shared library to help get symbol
information when looking at a crash.
* Add support for displaying the soname from an apk frame. Previously,
a frame map name would be only the apk, but now if the shared library
in the apk has set a soname, the map name will be `app.apk!libexample.so`
instead of only `app.apk`.
* Minimal support for Dwarf 5. This merely treats a Dwarf 5 version
elf file as Dwarf 4. It does not support the new dwarf ops in Dwarf 5.
Since the new ops are not likely to be used very often, this allows
continuing to unwind even when encountering Dwarf 5 elf files.
* Fix bug in pc handling of signal frames (b/130302288). In the previous
version, the pc would be wrong in the signal frame. The rest of the
unwind was correct, only the frame in the signal handler was incorrect
in Android P.
* Detect when an elf file is not readable so that a message can be
displayed indicating that. This can happen when an app puts the shared
libraries in non-standard locations that are not readable due to
security restrictions (selinux rules).
## Android R
* Display the offsets for Java interpreter frames. If this frame came
from a non-zero offset map, no offset is printed. Previously, the
line would look like:
#17 pc 00500d7a GoogleCamera.apk (com.google.camera.AndroidPriorityThread.run+10)
to:
#17 pc 00500d7a GoogleCamera.apk (offset 0x11d0000) (com.google.camera.AndroidPriorityThread.run+10)
* Fix bug where the load bias was set from the first PT\_LOAD program
header that has a zero p\_offset value. Now it is set from the first
executable PT\_LOAD program header. This has only ever been a problem
for host executables compiled for the x86\_64 architecture.
* Switched to the libc++ demangler for function names. Previously, the
demangler used was not complete, so some less common demangled function
names would not be properly demangled or the function name would not be
demangled at all.
* Fix bug in load bias handling. If the unwind information in the eh\_frame
or eh\_frame\_hdr does not have the same bias as the executable section,
and uses pc relative FDEs, the unwind will be incorrect. This tends
to truncate unwinds since the unwinder could not find the correct unwind
information for a given pc.