Applicability of BPF as a general-purpose programming language/runtime platform?

Applicability of BPF as a general-purpose programming language/runtime platform?

[Gavin Ray]

Hi all,

Apologies if questions/non-patch content aren't allowed on the mailing list,
I've not used the Linux kernel lists before so not certain of the
rules/etiquette.

I watched the talk from LPC, "The journey of BPF from restricted C language
towards extended and safe C" recently and many of the properties seemed
desirable. Particularly things like bounds-checking and verifiable locking.

Is it possible to use BPF as a general-purpose language for writing software?
If not, is it planned for the future? (Or maybe it's not technically possible)

Would be pretty neat, in my opinion.
Thanks and best regards,
--
Gavin

(P.S. Will I receive replies to this message?)

Re: Applicability of BPF as a general-purpose programming language/runtime platform?

[sdf]

On 11/12, Gavin Ray wrote:
> Hi all,

> Apologies if questions/non-patch content aren't allowed on the mailing  
> list,
> I've not used the Linux kernel lists before so not certain of the
> rules/etiquette.

> I watched the talk from LPC, "The journey of BPF from restricted C  
> language
> towards extended and safe C" recently and many of the properties seemed
> desirable. Particularly things like bounds-checking and verifiable  
> locking.

> Is it possible to use BPF as a general-purpose language for writing  
> software?
> If not, is it planned for the future? (Or maybe it's not technically  
> possible)

I'm aware of at least the following:

https://github.com/iovisor/ubpf
https://github.com/qmonnet/rbpf

These projects are developed outside of the kernel and provide a
more-or-less-general-purpose BPF runtime.

> Would be pretty neat, in my opinion.
> Thanks and best regards,
> --
> Gavin

> (P.S. Will I receive replies to this message?)