[profile] Add a mode to continuously sync counter updates to a file

Add support for continuously syncing profile counter updates to a file.

The motivation for this is that programs do not always exit cleanly. On
iOS, for example, programs are usually killed via a signal from the OS.
Running atexit() handlers after catching a signal is unreliable, so some
method for progressively writing out profile data is necessary.

The approach taken here is to mmap() the `__llvm_prf_cnts` section onto
a raw profile. To do this, the linker must page-align the counter and
data sections, and the runtime must ensure that counters are mapped to a
page-aligned offset within a raw profile.

Continuous mode is (for the moment) incompatible with the online merging
mode. This limitation is lifted in https://reviews.llvm.org/D69586.

Continuous mode is also (for the moment) incompatible with value
profiling, as I'm not sure whether there is interest in this and the
implementation may be tricky.

As I have not been able to test extensively on non-Darwin platforms,
only Darwin support is included for the moment. However, continuous mode
may "just work" without modification on Linux and some UNIX-likes. AIUI
the default value for the GNU linker's `--section-alignment` flag is set
to the page size on many systems. This appears to be true for LLD as
well, as its `no_nmagic` option is on by default. Continuous mode will
not "just work" on Fuchsia or Windows, as it's not possible to mmap() a
section on these platforms. There is a proposal to add a layer of
indirection to the profile instrumentation to support these platforms.

rdar://54210980

Differential Revision: https://reviews.llvm.org/D68351

1 files changed, 10 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/clang/docs/SourceBasedCodeCoverage.rst b/clang/docs/SourceBasedCodeCoverage.rst
index 27a1950a160..0beb284e475 100644
--- a/clang/docs/SourceBasedCodeCoverage.rst
+++ b/clang/docs/SourceBasedCodeCoverage.rst
@@ -87,6 +87,16 @@ directory structure will be created.  Additionally, the following special
   be between 1 and 9. The merge pool specifier can only occur once per filename
   pattern.
 
+* "%c" expands out to nothing, but enables a mode in which profile counter
+  updates are continuously synced to a file. This means that if the
+  instrumented program crashes, or is killed by a signal, perfect coverage
+  information can still be recovered. Continuous mode is not yet compatible with
+  the "%Nm" merging mode described above, does not support value profiling for
+  PGO, and is only supported on Darwin. Support for Linux may be mostly
+  complete but requires testing, and support for Fuchsia/Windows may require
+  more extensive changes: please get involved if you are interested in porting
+  this feature.
+
 .. code-block:: console
 
     # Step 2: Run the program.