Re: [PATCH RFC 1/4] docs: add a table showing x86-64 ABI compatibility levels

[Peter Maydell]

On Mon, 1 Feb 2021 at 15:39, Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com> wrote:
>
> It is useful to know which CPUs satisfy each x86-64 ABI
> compatibility level, when dealing with guest OS that require
> something newer than the baseline ABI.
>
> These ABI levels are defined in:
>
>   https://gitlab.com/x86-psABIs/x86-64-ABI/
>
> and supported by GCC, CLang, GLibC and more.
>
> Signed-off-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com>
> +ABI compatibility levels for CPU models
> +^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> +
> +The x86_64 architecture has a number of `ABI compatibility levels`_
> +defined. Traditionally most operating systems and toolchains would
> +only target the original baseline ABI. It is expected that in
> +future OS and toolchains are likely to target newer ABIs. The
> +following table illustrates which ABI compatibility levels can be
> +satisfied by the QEMU CPU models
> +
> +.. _ABI compatibility levels: https://gitlab.com/x86-psABIs/x86-64-ABI/
> +
> +.. csv-table:: x86-64 ABI compatibility levels
> +   :file: cpu-models-x86-abi.csv
> +   :widths: 40,15,15,15,15
> +   :header-rows: 1

Apart from the QEMU/KVM specific CPU models, why is this something
we should be documenting rather than, say, the people specifying
what the ABI compatiblity levels are ?

thanks
-- PMM