What registers are preserved through a linux x86-64 function call

Question

I believe I understand how the linux x86-64 ABI uses registers and stack to pass parameters to a function (cf. previous ABI discussion). What I\'m confused about is if/what

Answer 1

Experimental approach: disassemble GCC code

Mostly for fun, but also as a quick verification that you understood the ABI right.

Let's try to clobber all registers with inline assemble to force GCC to save and restore them:

main.c

#include 

uint64_t inc(uint64_t i) {
    __asm__ __volatile__(
        ""
        : "+m" (i)
        :
        : "rax",
          "rbx",
          "rcx",
          "rdx",
          "rsi",
          "rdi",
          "rbp",
          "rsp",
          "r8",
          "r9",
          "r10",
          "r11",
          "r12",
          "r13",
          "r14",
          "r15",
          "ymm0",
          "ymm1",
          "ymm2",
          "ymm3",
          "ymm4",
          "ymm5",
          "ymm6",
          "ymm7",
          "ymm8",
          "ymm9",
          "ymm10",
          "ymm11",
          "ymm12",
          "ymm13",
          "ymm14",
          "ymm15"
    );
    return i + 1;
}

int main(int argc, char **argv) {
    (void)argv;
    return inc(argc);
}

GitHub upstream.

Compile and disassemble:

 gcc -std=gnu99 -O3 -ggdb3 -Wall -Wextra -pedantic -o main.out main.c
 objdump -d main.out

Disassembly contains:

00000000000011a0 :
    11a0:       55                      push   %rbp
    11a1:       48 89 e5                mov    %rsp,%rbp
    11a4:       41 57                   push   %r15
    11a6:       41 56                   push   %r14
    11a8:       41 55                   push   %r13
    11aa:       41 54                   push   %r12
    11ac:       53                      push   %rbx
    11ad:       48 83 ec 08             sub    $0x8,%rsp
    11b1:       48 89 7d d0             mov    %rdi,-0x30(%rbp)
    11b5:       48 8b 45 d0             mov    -0x30(%rbp),%rax
    11b9:       48 8d 65 d8             lea    -0x28(%rbp),%rsp
    11bd:       5b                      pop    %rbx
    11be:       41 5c                   pop    %r12
    11c0:       48 83 c0 01             add    $0x1,%rax
    11c4:       41 5d                   pop    %r13
    11c6:       41 5e                   pop    %r14
    11c8:       41 5f                   pop    %r15
    11ca:       5d                      pop    %rbp
    11cb:       c3                      retq   
    11cc:       0f 1f 40 00             nopl   0x0(%rax)

and so we clearly see that the following are pushed and popped:

rbx
r12
r13
r14
r15
rbp

The only missing one from the spec is rsp, but we expect the stack to be restored of course. Careful reading of the assembly confirms that it is maintained in this case:

• sub $0x8, %rsp: allocates 8 bytes on stack to save %rdi at %rdi, -0x30(%rbp), which is done for the inline assembly +m constraint
• lea -0x28(%rbp), %rsp restores %rsp back to before the sub, i.e. 5 pops after mov %rsp, %rbp
• there are 6 pushes and 6 corresponding pops
• no other instructions touch %rsp

Tested in Ubuntu 18.10, GCC 8.2.0.