BTF kind layouts provide information to parse BTF kinds. By separating
parsing BTF from using all the information it provides, we allow BTF
to encode new features even if they cannot be used by readers. This
will be helpful in particular for cases where older tools are used
to parse newer BTF with kinds the older tools do not recognize;
the BTF can still be parsed in such cases using kind layout.
The intent is to support encoding of kind layouts optionally so that
tools like pahole can add this information. For each kind, we record
- length of singular element following struct btf_type
- length of each of the btf_vlen() elements following
- a (currently unused) flags field
The ideas here were discussed at [1], [2]; hence
Suggested-by: Andrii Nakryiko <andrii@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Alan Maguire <alan.maguire@oracle.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrii Nakryiko <andrii@kernel.org>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/bpf/20260326145444.2076244-2-alan.maguire@oracle.com
[1] https://lore.kernel.org/bpf/CAEf4BzYjWHRdNNw4B=eOXOs_ONrDwrgX4bn=Nuc1g8JPFC34MA@mail.gmail.com/
[2] https://lore.kernel.org/bpf/20230531201936.1992188-1-alan.maguire@oracle.com/
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