[issue22273] abort when passing certain structs by value using ctypes

[Eryk Sun]

Eryk Sun added the comment:

ctypes defines arrays as a pointer FFI type because they degenerate as pointers in C calls. But it's generally wrong to set a pointer FFI type for an array in the `elements` of a struct's FFI type. An integer array in a struct that's 16 bytes or less should be packed in one or two general-purpose registers (rdi, rsi, rdx, rcx, r8, r9). 

For the example 16-byte struct, classify_argument() in ffi64.c expects to classify two 8-byte words. But the struct's FFI type only has one element, which we've incorrectly defined as a pointer element. Thus the second word is left at the default classification X86_64_NO_CLASS. Back in ffi_call() it expects two classified words, so it aborts when it sees X86_64_NO_CLASS.

I think we can special-case small arrays in PyCStructUnionType_update_stgdict when assigning the `elements` of the FFI type of a struct or union. If we have an array that's 32 bytes or less, unpack it as individual FFI elements, e.g. a c_ushort * 8 array would be stored as 8 ffi_type_uint16 elements in the struct's FFI type.

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nosy: +eryksun

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue22273>
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