Exceptions in with_libc not working

[Christian Helmuth]

Hello Boris,

On Tue, Mar 14, 2017 at 03:11:27PM +0100, Boris Mulder wrote:
> Whenever I throw an exception somewhere in code inside a with_libc
> lambda expression, and try to catch it outside of that block, it will
> not catch that exception.

As I know the inner workings of the libc execution model this
observation sounds pretty natural, because in the end with_libc() is
just like: Please execute the given lambda body on an alternate stack.
The C++ exception implementation on the other hand heavily depends on
the current execution stack. Therefore, I wonder does it just not work
as expected or does it break gloriously?

> Example:
> 
> |t||ry {|
> 
> |    Libc::with_libc([&] () {         ...         throw E||xception();
>         ...     } );|
> 
> |} catch (Exception &e) {||
>     Genode::log("caught");||||
> }
> 
> |The "caught" will never be printed in this case. What can I do to
> fix/work around this?

The only workaround I see at the moment is to move the exception
handling also into the lambda function. Reflection of error or
exceptional conditions to the enclosing function then could be
implemented by return values or state changes in referenced objects. I
admit that is not what one should expect from a C++ framework but to
be fair with_libc() just bridges a strange gap between Genode
components and the legacy C runtime world.

We also had a small discussion about a more advanced solution where
you may declare expected exception types that can be passed out of the
lambda like we did for RPC. But, a solution with reasonable effort
would also come with a bunch of limitations, e.g., that exception
types could only be POD-like.

Greets
-- 
Christian Helmuth
Genode Labs

https://www.genode-labs.com/ · https://genode.org/
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