Re: Explicit pointer provenance APIs for CHERI

On Wed, Jun 24, 2026 at 10:54:51AM +0000, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
> --------
> Brooks Davis writes:
> 
> > On Mon, Jun 22, 2026 at 10:11:36AM -0700, Adrian Chadd wrote:
> 
> > > Specifically, I'd like a manpage which defines something top level for these
> > > terms and link to that manpage from manpages that talk about pointer
> > > provenance and anything else that leads into CHERI related stuff.
> >
> > Lacking an obviously better place I've added a section to arch(7) and
> > linked it from the various manpages.  https://reviews.freebsd.org/D57812
> 
> Not bad, but I dont think there's any way around having a proper CHERI(7)
> manual page too ?
> 
> It doesn't have to be long, but it has to be there.

The concept of the provenance is not specific to cheri, it is needed and
used by the compilers on regular architectures.

I think that instead of adding stuff to arch(7), we need a man page
like memory_model(7).  There is already some items that would be more
natural in memory_model.7 than in atomic.9, for instance.  Provenance
is also the good subject for discussion there.