6.6.1 Stack Overflow Checking

For most operating systems, `gcc' does not perform stack overflow checking by default. This means that if the main environment task or some other task exceeds the available stack space, then unpredictable behavior will occur. Most native systems offer some level of protection by adding a guard page at the end of each task stack. This mechanism is usually not enough for dealing properly with stack overflow situations because a large local variable could "jump" above the guard page. Furthermore, when the guard page is hit, there may not be any space left on the stack for executing the exception propagation code. Enabling stack checking avoids such situations.

To activate stack checking, compile all units with the gcc option -fstack-check. For example:

$ gcc -c -fstack-check package1.adb

Units compiled with this option will generate extra instructions to check that any use of the stack (for procedure calls or for declaring local variables in declare blocks) does not exceed the available stack space. If the space is exceeded, then a Storage_Error exception is raised.

For declared tasks, the stack size is controlled by the size given in an applicable Storage_Size pragma or by the value specified at bind time with -d (Switches for gnatbind) or is set to the default size as defined in the GNAT runtime otherwise.

For the environment task, the stack size depends on system defaults and is unknown to the compiler. Stack checking may still work correctly if a fixed size stack is allocated, but this cannot be guaranteed. To ensure that a clean exception is signalled for stack overflow, set the environment variable GNAT_STACK_LIMIT to indicate the maximum stack area that can be used, as in:

$ SET GNAT_STACK_LIMIT 1600

The limit is given in kilobytes, so the above declaration would set the stack limit of the environment task to 1.6 megabytes. Note that the only purpose of this usage is to limit the amount of stack used by the environment task. If it is necessary to increase the amount of stack for the environment task, then this is an operating systems issue, and must be addressed with the appropriate operating systems commands.