Last year I came up with this simple proposition which ended up being successfully implemented in ChibiOS: viewtopic.php?f=35&t=3819 (Thanks, Giovanni). TLDR the unexpected exception handler has been made weak, which allowed me to redefine it in my application. This is absolutely crucial for me, and it should be utterly important to everybody, otherwise, any unexpected IRQ causes the system to just hang bypassing the proper panic protocol (imagine what happens if you're running a power converter or an electric motor).
Anyway, the current implementation has a problem. This is how the weak unexpected handler is defined for GCC ARM CM4:
Code: Select all
b _unhandled_exception
.thumb_func
.weak _unhandled_exception
_unhandled_exception:
.stay:
b .stay
The problem is that if your firmware is sufficiently large, the branch "b _unhandled_exception" may fail to reach the redefined handler, resulting in the following error:
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chibios/os/common/startup/ARMCMx/compilers/GCC/vectors.S:767:(.text+0x2): relocation truncated to fit: R_ARM_THM_JUMP11 against symbol `_unhandled_exception' defined in .text._unhandled_exception section in /tmp/ccI8EdoC.ltrans5.ltrans.o
We need a different branch instruction that has a wider reach. A solution that should be compatible with any kind of Cortex M is to simply replace "B" with "BL":
Code: Select all
bl _unhandled_exception
.thumb_func
.weak _unhandled_exception
_unhandled_exception:
.stay:
b .stay
Yes, it clobbers the link register, but at this point, we don't care about it, because the unexpected handler is not supposed to return ever.
