[WIP] Introduce aarch64-unknown-linux-pauthtest target by jchlanda · Pull Request #154759 · rust-lang/rust

jchlanda · 2026-04-03T15:20:23Z

This PR introduces aarch64-unknown-linux-pauthtest target. The target enables
Pointer Authentication Code (PAC) support in Rust on AArch64 ELF based Linux
systems using a pauthtest ABI (provided by LLVM) and pauthtest-enabled sysroot
with custom musl, serving as a reference libc implementation.

Supported features include:

authenticating signed function pointers for extern "C" function calls
(corresponds to -fptrauth-calls included in pauthtest ABI as defined in
LLVM)
signing return address before spilling to stack and authenticating return
address after restoring from stack for non-leaf functions (corresponds to
-fptrauth-returns)
trapping if authentication failure is detected and FPAC feature is not present
(corresponds to -fptrauth-auth-traps)
signing of init/fini array entries with the signing schema used for pauthtest
ABI (corresponding to -fptrauth-init-fini,
-fptrauth-init-fini-address-discrimination)
non-ABI-affecting indirect control flow hardening features included in
pauthtest ABI (corresponding to -faarch64-jump-table-hardening,
-fptrauth-indirect-gotos)
signed ELF GOT entries (gated behind -Z ptrauth-elf-got, off by default)

Existing compiler support, such as enabling branch authentication instructions
(i.e.: -Z branch-protection) provide limited functionality, mainly signing
return addresses (pac-ret). The new target goes further by enabling ABI-level
pointer authentication support.

Please note that efforts were made to split the work into individual commits
that encapsulate different areas of the code; however, the commits are not
atomic and cannot be built or tested in isolation.

Useful links:

project goal
issue describing the need for the work: Add support for AArch64 Pointer Authentication ABI in Rust #148640

kovdan01 · 2026-04-14T10:58:07Z

compiler/rustc_llvm/llvm-wrapper/RustWrapper.cpp

+  if (!C)
+    return Ptr;
+  if (!C->getType()->isPointerTy())
+    return Ptr;
+  if (isa<UndefValue>(C) || isa<ConstantPointerNull>(C))
+    return Ptr;


View changes since the review

Do we expect values non-conforming to these conditions being passed to this function? Locally, I've commented out these lines, and nothing seems to be broken.

So, can we safely convert these to assertions? Or, maybe, some checks which would be present in release mode as well (and would panic when mismatch is detected)? Please just explain which contract do we have, who is responsible for these checks and whether the checks need to be just assertions or if we need to make them panicking or smth.

If there's a reason why we need to keep the current behavior, it's totally fine. But if so, can we somehow rename the function? Now it's name might make one think that we always wrap the underlying constant pointer value to ptrauth constant. But we also have this chunk of logic returning the exact input value w/o any change, and this is not clear from the function name.

Fair.
With it now being wrapped in const_ptr_auth and only two call sites we can't violate the contract.
However it is still a symbol that can be accessed freely. I'm going to change it to asserts.

jchlanda · 2026-04-14T11:30:05Z

Sure, I'll follow up on that. I don't expect all that subset to pass though.

I suppose that it's worth at least identifying where the root cause of the issue is: frontend or backend. Like, are IRs generated for aarch64-unknown-linux-musl and aarch64-unknown-linux-pauthtest different (so we generate them differently on Rust side and probably we should generate them identically), or are IRs identical and we for some reason behave differently on LLVM side.

If it's a frontend issue, it's actually probably worth fixing in the scope of this PR (unless it's terribly complex and time-consuming). If this is a backend issue, we'll fix that separately in LLVM

Looks like there is no bug in there, it's an expected behaviour. I'm guessing that when you compiled for musl it went with a +v8a. However when targeting pauthtest we request v8.3a, which includes support for lse. See: https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/blob/8e2a5e37eaf638c536dd71cb685843e8cb2aed2c/llvm/lib/Target/AArch64/AArch64Features.td#L964. bl __aarch64_cas4_relax - which is what the test checks against - is a software fallback, whereas on new enough HW we get a corresponding instruction: cas w8, w9, [x0].

You can verify that by either changing the arch to v3.8a or explicitly enabling lse.

Will disable the test and add a comment.

kovdan01 · 2026-04-14T11:33:39Z

Will disable the test and add a comment.

What I'm worried about is that in compiler/rustc_target/src/spec/targets/aarch64_unknown_linux_pauthtest.rs we have features: "+v8.3a,+outline-atomics,+pauth". So we explicitly request +outline-atomics (the same is done for the musl target, so it looks totally OK for pauthtest target).

And my understanding was that if we add +outline-atomics, we must indeed outline them no matter if we actually support them or not. But I might be wrong and I'd just like to hear your thoughts on this

compiler/rustc_target/src/spec/targets/aarch64_unknown_linux_pauthtest.rs

src/doc/rustc/src/platform-support/aarch64-unknown-linux-pauthtest.md

kovdan01 · 2026-04-14T12:52:36Z

src/doc/rustc/src/platform-support/aarch64-unknown-linux-pauthtest.md

+in Rust can be found at
+[#148640](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/148640).
+
+Existing compiler options such as `-mbranch-protection` provide limited pointer


View changes since the review

Is it -mbranch-protection for Rust? My understanding was that it's -Z branch-protection (while its indeed -mbranch-protection for clang). See also src/doc/unstable-book/src/compiler-flags/branch-protection.md.

Also, I'm not sure if it's worth talking about BTI - I doubt that anyone would mess BTI with pauthtest. But for pac-ret and pauthtest - it's non-obvious for new-comers because both these are based on the same PAC extension for aarch64 CPUs

kovdan01 · 2026-04-14T13:09:49Z

src/doc/rustc/src/platform-support/aarch64-unknown-linux-pauthtest.md

+Clang-based toolchain. In this case, no wrapper script is required,
+`<toolchain_root>/bin/aarch64-linux-pauthtest-clang` can be used directly.
+
+## Building the target


Removing the second one, both paragraphs should belong to the same header.

Is this update already present in this PR? Like, I'm still seeing the same header at lines 94 and 173.

kovdan01 · 2026-04-14T13:19:00Z

src/doc/rustc/src/platform-support/aarch64-unknown-linux-pauthtest.md

+`aarch64-unknown-linux-pauthtest` target enabled.
+
+For a comprehensive example of how to interact between C and Rust programs
+withing the testing framework please consult


View changes since the review

Typo: within

kovdan01 · 2026-04-14T13:19:33Z

src/doc/rustc/src/platform-support/aarch64-unknown-linux-pauthtest.md

+* non-ABI-affecting indirect control flow hardening features included in
+  pauthtest ABI (corresponding to `-faarch64-jump-table-hardening`,
+  `-fptrauth-indirect-gotos`)
+* signed ELF GOT entries (gated behind `-Z ptrauth-elf-got` off by default)


View changes since the review

Nit: probably a comma missed before 'off'?

kovdan01

@jchlanda Regarding test failures you've mentioned today - it looks like that for tests we need to manually specify additional compile args, otherwise stage1-tools-bin/compiletest uses the defaults.

Particularly, when running ./x test, it looks like we need to add --test-args --target-rustcflags --test-args "-Clink-arg=-Wl,--dynamic-linker=/path/to/aarch64-unknown-linux-pauthtest/usr/lib/libc.so".

This way of handling the issue is described in src/doc/rustc/src/platform-support/fuchsia.md

View changes since this review

src/doc/rustc/src/platform-support/aarch64-unknown-linux-pauthtest.md

jchlanda · 2026-04-15T07:16:22Z

Particularly, when running ./x test, it looks like we need to add --test-args --target-rustcflags --test-args "-Clink-arg=-Wl,--dynamic-linker=/path/to/aarch64-unknown-linux-pauthtest/usr/lib/libc.so".

Thank you @kovdan01. This indeed helps with a group of tests, but, still when we are in subprocess scenarios I see failures. I'll DM you.

kovdan01 · 2026-04-15T07:40:12Z

src/doc/rustc/src/platform-support/aarch64-unknown-linux-pauthtest.md

+
+* `Cargo.toml`
+
+```markdown


Should it be toml instead of markdown?

View changes since the review

kovdan01 · 2026-04-15T07:40:42Z

src/doc/rustc/src/platform-support/aarch64-unknown-linux-pauthtest.md

+* `c_src/plugin.c`
+
+```c
+#include <stdio.h>


Is this needed?

View changes since the review

kovdan01 · 2026-04-15T07:43:53Z

src/doc/rustc/src/platform-support/aarch64-unknown-linux-pauthtest.md

+## Cross-compilation toolchains and C code
+
+This target supports interoperability with C code. Use the PAC-enabled LLVM
+sysroot, described in building the sysroot section of this document. C code must


described in building the sysroot section of this document

The section is now gone, could you please change wording here to reflect the current state of the document?

View changes since the review

yeah, changed to: building the toolchain

kovdan01 · 2026-04-15T08:01:48Z

compiler/rustc_codegen_llvm/src/base.rs

+                // PAuth core info section of the resulting ELF, which the linker uses to enforce
+                // binary compatibility.
+                //
+                // We intentionally do not emit this flags now, since only a subset of pointer


Typo: this->these

View changes since the review

kovdan01 · 2026-04-15T08:02:23Z

compiler/rustc_codegen_llvm/src/base.rs

+                // binary compatibility.
+                //
+                // We intentionally do not emit this flags now, since only a subset of pointer
+                // authentication features is currently supported. By default, the absence of this


Maybe "subset of features included in pauthtest ABI" would be more clear?

View changes since the review

kovdan01 · 2026-04-15T08:06:42Z

compiler/rustc_codegen_llvm/src/base.rs

+                // Please note, that this would cause compatibility issues when linking against
+                // fully PAuth-enabled C/C++ binaries.
+                //
+                // Link to PAuth core info:


Nit: maybe "... info documentation:"? Or just "see also:"

I'm not a language expert, but I suppose this is not a link to the (platform, version) tuple (which is the definition of pauth core info) :)

View changes since the review

"documentation" added

kovdan01 · 2026-04-15T08:15:50Z

compiler/rustc_codegen_llvm/src/base.rs

+                // authentication features is currently supported. By default, the absence of this
+                // info is treated as compatible with any binary.
+                //
+                // Please note, that this would cause compatibility issues when linking against


I suppose it's worth rephrasing this highlighting the following details:

When talking about "compatibility issues", we are talking about runtime crashes due to auth failures while silently compiling and linking w/o problems

I would not generalize this to "fully pauth-enabled c/c++ binaries". We are OK with interop when only pointers signed using supported ptrauth feature subset are crossing c/rust boundary (at this point, meaning only free function pointers signed w/o type discrimination). So we need to highlight that if pointers signed with other features cross c/rust or cxx/rust boundary, we result in runtime failures. Maybe even provide a list of such pointers: member function pointers, virtual function pointers, virtual table pointers, maybe smth else I forgot to mention (free function pointers with non-zero discr are technically not a part of pauthtest ABI, so not mentioning here)

View changes since the review

OK, tried to incorporate this.

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		* `Cargo.toml`

		```markdown

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