In computer science, a calling convention is an implementation-level (low-level) scheme for how subroutines or functions receive parameters from their caller and how they return a result. When some code calls a function, design choices have been taken for where and how parameters are passed to that function, and where and how results are returned from that function, with these transfers typically done via certain registers or within a stack frame on the call stack. There are design choices for how the tasks of preparing for a function call and restoring the environment after the function has completed are divided between the caller and the callee. Some calling convention specifies the way every function should get called. The correct calling convention should be used for every function call, to allow the correct and reliable execution of the whole program using these functions.
👉 Calling convention in the context of Thread-local storage
In computer programming, thread-local storage (TLS) is a memory management method that uses static or global memory local to a thread. The concept allows storage of data that appears to be global in a system with separate threads.
Many systems impose restrictions on the size of the thread-local memory block, in fact often rather tight limits. On the other hand, if a system can provide at least a memory address (pointer) sized variable thread-local, then this allows the use of arbitrarily sized memory blocks in a thread-local manner, by allocating such a memory block dynamically and storing the memory address of that block in the thread-local variable. On RISC machines, the calling convention often reserves a thread pointer register for this use.
Calling convention in the context of Register allocation
In compiler optimization, register allocation is the process of assigning local automatic variables and expression results to a limited number of processor registers.
Register allocation can happen over a basic block (local register allocation), over a whole function/procedure (global register allocation), or across function boundaries traversed via call-graph (interprocedural register allocation). When done per function/procedure the calling convention may require insertion of save/restore around each call-site.
View the full Wikipedia page for Register allocationCalling convention in the context of Stack trace
In computing, a stack trace (also called stack backtrace or stack traceback) is a report of the active stack frames at a certain point in time during the execution of a program. When a program is run, memory is often dynamically allocated in two places: the stack and the heap. Memory is continuously allocated on a stack but not on a heap. Stack also refers to a programming construct, thus to differentiate it, this stack is referred to as the program's function call stack. Technically, once a block of memory has been allocated on the stack, it cannot be easily removed as there can be other blocks of memory that were allocated after it. Each time a function is called in a program, a block of memory called an activation record is allocated on top of the call stack. Generally, the activation record stores the function's arguments and local variables. What exactly it contains and how it's laid out is determined by the calling convention.
Programmers commonly use stack tracing during interactive and post-mortem debugging. End-users may see a stack trace displayed as part of an error message, which the user can then report to a programmer.
View the full Wikipedia page for Stack trace