[R-SIG-Win] experimental toolchain: C++ exceptions + setjmp, longjmp

[Kevin Ushey]

Hi all,

Using the version of R + toolchain built by Jeroen here:

    http://www.stat.ucla.edu/~jeroen/mingw-w64/

I'm running into segfaults when attempting to run Rcpp unit tests with
64bit R. In particular, when an Rcpp module throws an exception, it is
later caught, and 'forwarded to R' -- effectively, we have a construct
of the form:

    SEXP r_condition = R_NilValue;
    try {
        // C++ code that might throw
    } catch (...) {
        // populate r_condition
    }

    // forward errors back to R
    if (r_condition != R_NilValue) {
        SEXP call = Rf_lang2(Rf_install("stop"), r_condition);
        Rf_eval(call, R_GlobalEnv); // will longjmp
    }

The main goal is to ensure that any longjmps performed occur at the
top level, with no C++ objects on the stack (and so no destructors are
skipped). This allows us to safely transfer control back to R from a
C++ context.

The problem is, with the new toolchain, I'm seeing a crash on the
attempted longjmp performed by R in the Rf_eval call.

Moreover, though, I get an error even with a _local_ setjmp / longjmp
after the exception is thrown and caught; ie, this fails:

    if (r_condition != R_NilValue) {
        jmp_buf buffer;
        if (!setjmp(buffer)) {
            longjmp(buffer, 1);
        }
    }

This silly local setjmp / longjmp causes a crash, which I think
implies 'something' has been corrupted 'somewhere' in the previous
logic (unfortunately, I have no idea where)

There is some extra prose in the pull request here that attempted to
work around this: https://github.com/RcppCore/Rcpp/pull/371, but I
think ultimately this needs to be narrowed down into a reproducible
example. So far, the pieces seem to be:

    1) A C++ function throws an exception,
    2) That exception is caught,
    3) We attempt to perform a longjmp after the exception is caught / handled.

I still don't have any idea where fault lies (most likely within the
toolchain, but could be within Rcpp or R itself) but if anyone is
feeling 'brave' some help in generating a reproducible example would
be very helpful. Note that such examples execute fine on other
platforms, and with the old Windows toolchain, so in all likelihood
it's a bug in exception handling with the new toolchain.

It's also possible that the SJLJ exceptions used by the toolchain do
not play well with the SEH exception model used internally by Windows
DLLs (and, in fact, this _is_ where the crashes do later happen), but
I think we want to stick with SJLJ for compatibility with pre-existing
DLLs. This also seems surprising though, since the previous Windows
toolchain used SJLJ exceptions (IIUC).

NOTE: The previously established workaround, using
`-fno-asynchronous-unwind-tables`, does not seem to save us from this
bug.

Kevin

---

Rcpp's failing unit test code:
https://github.com/RcppCore/Rcpp/blob/7d556daf295e279edea7990e7b7c19f58e1f9d8f/inst/unitTests/runit.Module.R#L69

The C++ code actually executed:
https://github.com/RcppCore/Rcpp/blob/7d556daf295e279edea7990e7b7c19f58e1f9d8f/inst/include/Rcpp/module/Module_Property.h#L36

Where it's caught:
https://github.com/RcppCore/Rcpp/blob/9491c727c1f53006f17cb4c932aecbaa4617757f/inst/include/Rcpp/macros/macros.h#L38-L56

The callstack from WinDbg (NOTE: Some symbol names from R may be wrong)

Child-SP          RetAddr           Call Site
00000000`044021a0 00000000`76ecf4ec ntdll!RtlRaiseStatus+0x18
00000000`04402740 000007fe`fdd6e543 ntdll!RtlIsDosDeviceName_U+0x15acc
00000000`04402de0 00000000`6c7c1d0e msvcrt!longjmp+0x63
00000000`04403320 00000000`6c7c0d13 R!Rf_error+0x2ee
00000000`04403580 00000000`6c7c4314 R!R_GetSrcFilename+0x513
00000000`04407800 00000000`6c7c4388 R!Rf_warningcall_immediate+0x1044
00000000`04407840 00000000`6c7d3f4e R!Rf_warningcall_immediate+0x10b8
00000000`04407870 00000000`6c7e4b31 R!do_Rprof+0x7c6e
00000000`044083f0 00000000`6c7e64e6 R!Rf_eval+0x161
00000000`04408660 00000000`6c7e4ca3 R!Rf_applyClosure+0x5d6
00000000`044088c0 00000000`6c54434f R!Rf_eval+0x2d3
00000000`04408b30 00000000`003fff90
sourceCpp_1!ZN4Rcpp6class_I12ModuleNumberE11setPropertyEP7SEXPRECS4_S4_+0x4ef
00000000`04408b38 00000000`6c80529d 0x3fff90
00000000`04408b40 00000004`00000004 R!Rf_pmatch+0xa6d
00000000`04408c40 00000000`00000000 0x00000004`00000004