> Alexei Starovoitov <alexei.starovoitov@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Fri, Sep 29, 2023 at 1:17 PM Dave Thaler > <dthaler=40microsoft.com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Now that we have some new "v4" instructions, it seems a good time to > > ask about what it means to support (or comply with) the ISA RFC once > > published. Does it mean that a verifier/disassembler/JIT compiler/etc. MUST > support *all* the > > non-deprecated instructions in the document? That is any runtime or tool that > > doesn't support the new instructions is considered non-compliant with the BPF > ISA? [...] > > Or should we create some things that are SHOULDs, or finer grained > > units of compliance so as to not declare existing deployments non-compliant? > > I suspect 'non-compliance' label will cause an unnecessary backlash, so I would > go with SHOULD wording. Yeah, but if each instruction is a separate SHOULD, then a runtime could (say) support one atomic instruction and not others. Having that level of granularity would really complicate interoperability and cross-platform tooling in my opinion. So it might be better to list groups of instructions and have the SHOULD be at the granularity of a group? Dave
