Unaligned Access Hardfault with lv_style.h

Description

I am getting unaligned access hardfault errors at runtime. This seems to be caused by the lv_style_get_prop_inlined function, within lv_style.h. The error also seems to be dependent on my GCC compiler optimisation settings.

Initially, hardfaults were occuring after running for approximately 5 mins (though this time did vary). This would be an unaligned access fault, stopping within the lv_style_get_prop_inlined function in lv_style.h, at either line 365:

return LV_RES_INV;

or line 374:

for(i = 0; i < style->prop_cnt; i++) {

These occurred with compiler optimisation turned off (-O0). These issues were solved by changing compiler optimization to ‘Optimise More’ (-O2).

However, after adding the following line of code into my application:

lv_scr_load_anim(scr1, LV_SCR_LOAD_ANIM_MOVE_BOTTOM, 500, 0, false);

the same hardfault occurs immediately when running the program, this time at lv_style.h line 359:

for(const_prop = style->v_p.const_props; const_prop->prop != LV_STYLE_PROP_INV; const_prop++) {

To fix this, I had to turn optimisation back off, after which the program is now running successfully again. Changing the optimisation setting back to ‘Optimise More’ (-O2) reintroduced the issue, confirming that is was indeed the optimisation setting that fixed it.

At this point, I’m a bit stuck. Ideally I want optimisation on, and I can only presume that by changing the optimisation state, the alignment is being changed which fixes the issue. Is there anything else that I might be missing?

Please let me know if there’s any more information that I can provide that would help.

What MCU/Processor/Board and compiler are you using?

i.MX RT1060 (ARM M7) Evaluation board / GCC, with FreeRTOS

What LVGL version are you using?

v8.0.2 (latest master)

If you have not enabled unaligned accesses on the processor, please try compiling your project with -mno-unaligned-access as well. I haven’t had this issue in a while, but my recollection is that GCC is a little too smart and knows that Cortex-M7 processors can be configured to allow unaligned accesses, so it will emit these in some cases to reduce the code size.

Thanks very much for such a speedy response!

Unfortunately, I’m still getting the same hardfault with that compiler flag added. I’ll try and investigate this further on my end but if you have any other suggestions of things to try off the top of your head, then please do let me know!

Thanks again for the help!