GCC-LOCAL(1) | General Commands Manual | GCC-LOCAL(1)

# NAME

`gcc-local` — local modifications to gcc

# DESCRIPTION

OpenBSD uses derivatives of gcc(1) versions 3.3.6 or 4.2.1, depending on machine architecture. In all cases, the software comes with specific modifications for OpenBSD:

- For the C programming language, `gcc` defaults to the gnu99 standard, not gnu89. The `-std` option can be used to select a different language standard.
- `gcc` does not search under /usr/local for include files nor for libraries: as a system compiler, it only searches the system paths by default.
- On all architectures where the stack is non-executable, trampoline code marks the smallest possible area around the trampoline stub executable using mprotect(2).
- Trampoline code generation is disabled by default. Code requiring trampolines will not compile without `-ftrampolines`. The warning flag `-Wtrampolines` can be used to locate trampoline instances if trampoline generation is re-enabled.
- The `-O2` option does not include `-fstrict-aliasing`, as this option causes issues on some legacy code. `-fstrict-aliasing` is very unsafe with code that plays tricks with casts, bypassing the already weak type system of C.
- The `-O2` option does not include `-fstrict-overflow`, as this option causes issues on some legacy code. `-fstrict-overflow` can cause surprising optimizations to occur, possibly deleting security critical overflow checks.
- The `-O2` option does not include the `-ftree-vrp` optimization as it is known to be broken in `gcc 4.2.1`.
- `gcc` recognizes the extra format attribute syslog, to better match the definition of syslog(3), and silence erroneous warnings when used with `-pedantic`.
- `gcc` recognizes the attribute `__nonnull__`, which can be used to mark arguments that can't be `NULL`. The printf format attribute does not imply `__nonnull__` for the format. This allows for correct format checking on the err(3) function family.
- `gcc` recognizes the extra attribute `__sentinel__`, which can be used to mark varargs function that need a `NULL` pointer to mark argument termination, like execl(3). This exposes latent bugs for 64-bit architectures, where a terminating 0 will expand to a 32-bit int, and not a full-fledged 64-bits pointer.
- On alpha, `-mieee` is enabled by default to enable full compliance with the IEEE floating point standard, although the “inexact” flag is not maintained. Additionally, rounding mode is dynamic.
- `gcc` comes with the “ProPolice” stack protection extension, which is enabled by default. This extension reorders local variable declarations and adds stack consistency checks at runtime, in order to detect stack overflows, and will attempt to report the problem in the system logs by calling syslog(3) with a `LOG_CRIT` priority message: “stack overflow in function XXX”, and abort the faulting process. It can be turned off using the `-fno-stack-protector` command line option. Note that the stack protector relies on some support code in libc. Stand-alone programs not linked against libc must either provide their own support bits or use the `-fno-stack-protector` option.

  There is a `-fstack-protector-all` option that turns stack protection code on for all functions and disables any heuristic that flags some functions as safe. This extended checking has a moderate runtime cost though. There is a `-fstack-protector-strong` option, similar to `-fstack-protector`, which includes additional functions to be protected — those that have local array definitions or have references to local frame addresses.

- On amd64, `-msave-args` can be passed to the compiler to have functions save their register arguments on the stack, while maintaining compatibility with the System 5 AMD64 ABI. This enables tools and debuggers that understand this semantic to trivially generate stack traces that include function arguments.
- On the alpha, amd64, arm, hppa, i386, mips64, powerpc, sh and sparc64 architectures, `gcc` generates position-independent executables (PIEs) by default, allowing the system to load the resulting binary at a random location. This behavior can be turned off by passing `-fno-pie` to the compiler and `-nopie` to the linker.
- `gcc` recognizes a new flag which is enabled by default, `-Wbounded`, to perform basic checks on functions which accept buffers and sizes. An extra attribute, `__bounded__`, has been added to mark functions that can be checked this way.
- `gcc` recognizes a new format attribute, kprintf, to deal with the extra format arguments ‘`%b`’, ‘`%r`’, and ‘`%z`’ used in the OpenBSD kernel.
- `gcc` does not store its version string in objects. This behavior can be restored with `-fident`.
- The option `-fstack-shuffle` will randomize the order of stack variables at compile time with `gcc 4.2.1`, which can be helpful to find bugs. This option is silently ignored by `gcc 3.3.6`.
- `gcc` will not move variables initialized with the value zero from the data section to the bss section. The default behaviour of `gcc 3.3.6` and `gcc 4.2.1` on other systems is to perform this action, which can be restored for OpenBSD with `-fzero-initialized-in-bss`.
- `gcc` does not warn for cast expressions used as lvalues outside of `-pedantic`.
- `gcc 4.2.1` does not warn for passing pointer arguments or assignment with different signedness outside of `-pedantic`. This can be re-enabled with the `-Wpointer-sign` flag.
- `gcc` recognizes the preprocessor flag `-CC` that lets comments in macros pass through to the output (except in `-traditional` mode).
- The warning option `-Wsystem-headers`, which makes `gcc` report warnings in systems headers, is enabled by default.
- `gcc` supports two extra warning options:
  - `-Wframe-larger-than=`N (and its non-portable alias `-Wstack-larger-than-`N) will report functions using more than N bytes of stack space for their local variables. Stack space used for other purposes (such as register window saving, callee-saved registers, or outbound arguments storage) is not taken into account for this check.
  - `-Wvariable-decl` will report automatic variable declarations whose size cannot be determined at compile-time.
- `gcc 4.2.1` and `gcc 3.3.6` have backported support for the GCC binary integer constants extension, which was first introduced in `gcc 4.3`.
- The behavior of `-Wshadow` in `gcc 4.2.1` has been altered to behave similarly to `gcc 4.8` and not warn about variables or parameters that shadow a global function unless the variable or parameter is of type pointer-to-function.

# ATTRIBUTES

The `__bounded__` attribute is used to type-check functions whose parameters pass fixed-length buffers and their sizes. The syntax for normal buffers is:

`__attribute__`((`__bounded__`(`__buffer__`, buffer, length)))

where buffer contains the parameter number (starting from 1) of the pointer to the buffer, and length contains the parameter number of the buffer length argument.

`gcc` will emit a warning if the length argument is a constant larger than the actual size of the buffer. If the buffer is not a statically declared array of fixed length, no warnings will be generated. Refer to memcpy(3) for an example of a function with this check.

For checking strings, just use `__string__` instead of `__buffer__`:

`__attribute__`((`__bounded__`(`__string__`, buffer, length)))

In addition to the checks described above, this also tests if the length argument was wrongly derived from a `sizeof`(void *) operation. strlcpy(3) is a good example of a string function with this check.

If a function needs string checking like `__string__` but operates on element counts rather than buffer sizes, use `__wcstring__`:

`__attribute__`((`__bounded__`(`__wcstring__`, buffer, count)))

An example of a string function with this check is wcslcpy(3).

Some functions specify the length as two arguments: the number of elements and the size of each element. In this case, use the `__size__` attribute:

`__attribute__`((`__bounded__`(`__size__`, buffer, nmemb, size)))

where buffer contains the parameter number of the pointer to the buffer, nmemb contains the parameter number of the number of members, and size has the parameter number of the size of each element. The type checks performed by `__size__` are the same as the `__buffer__` attribute. See fread(3) for an example of this type of function.

If a function accepts a buffer parameter and specifies that it has to be of a minimum length, the __minbytes__ attribute can be used:

`__attribute__`((`__bounded__`(`__minbytes__`, buffer, minsize)))

where buffer contains the parameter number of the pointer to the buffer, and minsize specifies the minimum number of bytes that the buffer should be. ctime_r(3) is an example of this type of function.

If `-Wbounded` is specified with `-Wformat`, additional checks are performed on sscanf(3) format strings. The ‘`%s`’ fields are checked for incorrect bound lengths by checking the size of the buffer associated with the format argument.

# SEE ALSO

gcc(1)

# CAVEATS

The `-Wbounded` flag only works with statically allocated fixed-size buffers. Since it is applied at compile-time, dynamically allocated memory buffers and non-constant arguments are ignored.

October 29, 2023 | Debian