Re: Explicit pointer provenance APIs for CHERI

On Wed, 24 Jun 2026 17:37:12 +0300
Konstantin Belousov <[email protected]> wrote:

> 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.

Sorry, it should be just a noise, but the term "memory model"
reminds me T, S, M, C, L in ancient DOS (real mode only in 8086) era...

IIRC, C model (unrelated with the C programming language) was almost
specific memory model on Lattice C, and some others start defining H
aound the timing i386 appeared.

-- 
Tomoaki AOKI    <[email protected]>