BPF support in GCC 16 and beyond

6 hours ago

GCC 16.1 marks progress in BPF support, closing feature parity with LLVM.
BPF support extends across GNU toolchain including GCC, binutils, DejaGNU, and GDB.
GCC passes 601 out of 713 kernel BPF self-tests, targeting fixing remaining issues.
Gentoo uses GCC as an optional BPF compiler, generating real-world bug reports.
GCC adds work-in-progress support for Solana's modified BPF, exploring new instructions.
CO-RE relocations addressed by implementing Clang-like attribute pragmas.
BTF type and declaration tags supported in GCC 16, with minor DWARF identifier differences.
GCC testing integrated with DejaGNU, automatically running BPF tests via CI.
Optimization challenges include function prototype changes and BTF deduplication.
Future plans include a BPF cost model and verifier improvements for GCC compatibility.

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