rust-lang / rust-lang/rust-bindgen

E0587 error on packed and aligned structures from C

Open
#1,538 10 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

bug I-bogus-codegen
Dominant language
Rust
Stars
5.3k
Forks
829
Avg merge
1d 1h
Merged PRs (30d)
15

Description

I ran into the following issue when converting some kernel headers with bindgen 0.48.1:

When converting C structures that are both packed and aligned using either C2Rust or bindgen, such as:

struct xregs_state {
	struct fxregs_state		i387;
	struct xstate_header		header;
	u8				extended_state_area[0];
} __attribute__ ((packed, aligned (64)));

the code that either tool produces looks something like:

#[repr(C, packed(64))]
#[repr(align(64))]
pub struct xregs_state {
    pub i387: fxregs_state,
    pub header: xstate_header,
    pub extended_state_area: __IncompleteArrayField<u8>,
}

This Rust code fails to compile due to error E0587:

error[E0587]: type has conflicting packed and align representation hints
    --> .../out/bindings.rs:3894:1
     |
3894 | / pub struct xregs_state {
3895 | |     pub i387: fxregs_state,
3896 | |     pub header: xstate_header,
3897 | |     pub extended_state_area: __IncompleteArrayField<u8>,
3898 | | }
     | |_^

We can work around this in C2Rust by emitting an aligned outer/packed inner structure pair (I think bindgen could do the same), but I'm wondering if it would be better to fix this on the Rust language/compiler side (I also opened https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/59154 for a discussion on this).

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

The issue names no bindgen files or tests. Reproduce the packed-and-aligned C structure with bindgen 0.48.1, inspect the generated representation hints, and read the linked Rust compiler discussion; done would require a decided and verified resolution in bindgen or confirmation that the compiler issue is the appropriate fix.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
c, rust
Domain
compilers, tooling
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.