What does this error mean: `somefile.c:200: error: the frame size of 1032 bytes is larger than 1024 bytes`?

Question

During a make, I'm seeing an error along the lines of:

cc1: warnings being treated as errors
somefile.c:200: error: the frame size of 1032 bytes is larger than 1024 bytes

The line number points to the closing brace of a c function that has a signature like this:

void trace(SomeEnum1 p1, SomeEnum2 p2, char* format, ...) {
    char strBuffer[1024];
    ...

The function prints some stuff into the buffer.

Anyone know what this type of error means in general?

Answer 1

I'm guessing there's some large buffer in that routine that is stack-allocated; this is likely causing the stack frame of that function to exceed 1024 bytes, which seems to be some compiler-enforced limit for the architecture upon which you are building. Possible solutions would include passing a compiler flag to relax the warning, expand the upper limit of the stack size, or dynamically allocating the buffer.

Answer 2

Here is the GCC documentation referring to this warning:

STACK_CHECK_MAX_FRAME_SIZE

The maximum size of a stack frame, in bytes. GNU CC will generate probe instructions in non-leaf functions to ensure at least this many bytes of stack are available. If a stack frame is larger than this size, stack checking will not be reliable and GNU CC will issue a warning. The default is chosen so that GNU CC only generates one instruction on most systems. You should normally not change the default value of this macro.

From http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-2.95.3/gcc_17.html#SEC214