[PATCH 00/18] x86: new .insn directive

[H.J. Lu]

On Mon, Mar 6, 2023 at 1:26 AM Jan Beulich <jbeulich@suse.com> wrote:
>
> On 03.03.2023 17:50, H.J. Lu wrote:
> > X86 encoding scheme is quite complex.  It may get even more complex in
> > the future.
>
> Indeed. Also some complexities did exist only transiently, like AMD's
> DREX. MVEX is mentioned in the series, and I'm not sure whether to
> call this "historic" as well. However, ...
>
> >  I suggest we wait for a while so that we can get clear pictures
> > what the future encoding scheme looks like.
>
> ... I have to admit that I'm puzzled by this suggestion. The rate at
> which new encoding schemes appear is pretty low. So unless you know
> of something to see the (public) light of day soon, I wonder what
> meaning you assign to "a while". The plan certainly is for this work
> to land well in time for 2.40, unless there are clear technical
> issues speaking against it. In no event do I plan to wait very long
> with committing not directly .insn-related changes in the series,
> like patches 06 ... 09 or even 10, and maybe 04 as well as 12.
>
> I shall perhaps also add that I view entirely new encoding schemes
> as less of a problem - support for them can be added to .insn
> handling incrementally. What could be more problematic are changes
> to one of the existing schemes.
>

We will evaluate if these changes will cause any potential issues for
the future.


-- 
H.J.