[PATCH] x86: Warn .insn instruction with length > 15 bytes

[Jan Beulich]

On 06.02.2024 19:06, H.J. Lu wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 6, 2024 at 9:05 AM Jan Beulich <jbeulich@suse.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 06.02.2024 17:28, H.J. Lu wrote:
>>> With as_bad, assembler will continue to assemble, just not generate
>>> an object file.   We ran into this with APX.  Not everyone checks
>>> assembler warnings closely.  It led to mysterious crashes.   I am
>>> not against it if someone else implements an assembler option to
>>> turn this error into a warning.
>>
>> But it should be the other way around: The compiler could pass an
>> option to promote the (default) warning to an error. And if you
>> don#t pay attention to warning for assembly files, you could pass
>> the same option as well. Without harming anyone else with anything
> 
> People who use/need instructions > 15 bytes belong to a very small
> minority.  If they want to do it, they can use .insn or use binutlls 2.41
> or older.  The default assembler isn't for them.

No, staying on an old assembler isn't viable. And minority or not, you
have to face it: In the present discussion it is you who represents a
minority. As such I'm even inclined to suggest that your earlier patch
wants reverting, on the basis that it was put in despite there being
disagreement. Unless you soon come forward with an incremental change
undoing at least the worst of its effects ...

>> that has worked before.
> 
> The reason that we didn't run into the size limit before is that normal
> instruction usages never exceed the 15 byte limit before APX.

Didn't I earlier give examples of "normal instructions" that have this
issue? I don't see anything "not normal" in insns using e.g. segment or
address size overrides.

The impression I'm getting is that the problem originally was of no
interest to you because initially it affected AMD-specific insns only.
And the subsequent appearance of the same issue in HLE insns then was
mentally put off by you for being "too exotic" (and I partly agree
that _there_ one may indeed consider the example contrived). You only
started caring when it was an Intel extension which was noticeably
affected. Yet that's not the position you ought to take as a binutils
maintainer, imo.

Jan