[asl question] ASLv1 for assembly syntax and encoding?

[katrinafyi]

(I can't send mail to the atg-formal@arm.com address so I'm posting here instead, I hope that is okay)

Hi atg-formal@,

I'm Kait Lam and our group at UQ have been using the current ASL specs to extract semantics for binary analysis work. The new ASLv1 looks much improved and we're looking forward to the release. For our next work, we're interested in assembly syntax formatting/parsing derived from the spec (basically, like 1), so I would like to ask about the assembly syntax portion of the MRA.

In ASLv0, this was present amongst the XML files but it was not super easy to work with. The information is spread across the asmtemplate, the bit field table, and the assembler symbols section. In particular, the assembler symbols section was the main definition for encoding/decoding, but this is written in English prose with significant variations between different instructions.

Before we invest more time into the current format, I wanted to ask whether ASLv1 has plans to change the format of the assembly syntax definition in the MRA - in particular, whether there are plans to define it more formally. And if not in ASLv1, is this something which Arm has plans to do eventually?

Thanks for your excellent work, and I look forward to your reply.

Kait

[hrutvik]

Hi Kait, thanks very much for getting in touch! As it stands, the ASL1 language definition is separate to Arm's XML releases, except the XML releases incorporate ASL1 code. I have contacted you via email so that we can discuss any requirements or difficulties you may have!