[PATCH] arm64: Implement _THIS_IP_ using inline asm

[Marco Elver]

Both GCC [1] and Clang [2] consider the generic version of _THIS_IP_ to
be broken:

#define _THIS_IP_ ({ __label__ __here; __here: (unsigned long)&&__here; })

In particular, the address of a label is only expected to be used with a
computed goto.

While the generic version more or less works today, it is known to be
brittle and may break with current and future optimizations. For
example, Clang -O2 always returns 1 when this function is inlined:

static inline unsigned long get_ip(void)
{ return ({ __label__ __here; __here: (unsigned long)&&__here; }); }

Fix it by overriding _THIS_IP_ in <asm/linkage.h> (which is included by
<linux/instruction_pointer.h>) using an architecture-specific inline asm
version. Additionally, avoiding taking the address of a label prevents
compilers from emitting spurious indirect branch targets (e.g. ENDBR or
BTI) under control-flow integrity schemes.

Link: https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=120071 [1]
Link: https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/issues/138272 [2]
Signed-off-by: Marco Elver <el...@google.com>
---
arch/arm64/include/asm/linkage.h | 2 ++
1 file changed, 2 insertions(+)

diff --git a/arch/arm64/include/asm/linkage.h b/arch/arm64/include/asm/linkage.h
index 40bd17add539..73eabc82a6bb 100644
--- a/arch/arm64/include/asm/linkage.h
+++ b/arch/arm64/include/asm/linkage.h
@@ -43,4 +43,6 @@
SYM_TYPED_START(name, SYM_L_GLOBAL, SYM_A_ALIGN) \
bti c ;

+#define _THIS_IP_ ({ unsigned long __ip; asm volatile("adr %0, ." : "=r" (__ip)); __ip; })
+
#endif
--
2.54.0.563.g4f69b47b94-goog

[Will Deacon]

On Mon, 11 May 2026 22:16:59 +0200, Marco Elver wrote:
> Both GCC [1] and Clang [2] consider the generic version of _THIS_IP_ to
> be broken:
>
> #define _THIS_IP_ ({ __label__ __here; __here: (unsigned long)&&__here; })
>
> In particular, the address of a label is only expected to be used with a
> computed goto.
>

> [...]

Applied to arm64 (for-next/misc), thanks!

[1/1] arm64: Implement _THIS_IP_ using inline asm
https://git.kernel.org/arm64/c/d54e4fde9de2

Cheers,
--
Will

https://fixes.arm64.dev
https://next.arm64.dev
https://will.arm64.dev