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[flang][docs] Add note about Cray pointers and the TARGET attribute (#137993)

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We found some tests checking for loops assigning between Cray pointer
handles and their pointees which produced "incorrect" results with
optimizations enabled; this is because the compiler expects Cray
pointers not to alias with any other entity.

[The HPE documentation for Cray Fortran extensions
specifies:](https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/docDisplay?docId=a00113911en_us&docLocale=en_US&page=Types.html#cray-poiter-type)

> the compiler assumes that the storage of a pointee is
> never overlaid on the storage of another variable

Jean pointed out that if a user's code uses entities that alias via Cray
pointers, they may add the TARGET attribute to inform Flang of this
aliasing, but that Flang's behavior is in line with Cray's own
documentation and we should not make any changes to our alias analysis
to try and detect this case.

Updating documentation so that users that encounter this situation have
a way to allow their code to compile as they intend.
This commit is contained in:
Asher Mancinelli 2025-05-05 08:32:08 -07:00 committed by GitHub
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flang/docs/Aliasing.md
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@ -264,11 +264,30 @@ Fortran also has no rule against associating read-only data with a pointer.
Cray pointers are, or were, an extension that attempted to provide
some of the capabilities of modern pointers and allocatables before those
features were standardized.
They had some aliasing restrictions; in particular, Cray pointers were
not allowed to alias each other.
They are now more or less obsolete and we have no plan in place to
support them.
They had some aliasing restrictions; in particular, Cray pointers were not
allowed to alias each other.
In this example, `handle` aliases with `target`.
```
integer(kind=8) :: target(10)
integer(kind=8) :: ptr
integer(kind=8) :: handle(10)
pointer(ptr, handle)
target = 1
ptr = loc(target)
print *, target
end
```
Optimizations assume that Cray pointers do not alias any other variables.
In the above example, it is assumed that `handle` and `target` do not alias,
and optimizations will treat them as separate entities.
In order to disable optimizations that assume that there is no aliasing between
Cray pointer targets and entities they alias with, add the TARGET attribute to
variables aliasing with a Cray pointer (the `target` variable in this example).
## Type considerations