doc: Recommend using C rather than assembly language

Add a section for that in the coding guidelines.

Change-Id: Ie6819c4df5889a861460eb96acf2bc9c0cfb494e
Signed-off-by: Sandrine Bailleux <sandrine.bailleux@arm.com>
This commit is contained in:
Sandrine Bailleux 2020-08-20 11:17:41 +02:00
parent 9061c0c9ab
commit 06ffa16694
1 changed files with 19 additions and 0 deletions

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@ -441,6 +441,25 @@ unsigned integer on all systems, cast it to ``unsigned int``.
These guidelines should be updated if additional types are needed.
Favor C language over assembly language
---------------------------------------
Generally, prefer code written in C over assembly. Assembly code is less
portable, harder to understand, maintain and audit security wise. Also, static
analysis tools generally don't analyze assembly code.
There are, however, legitimate uses of assembly language. These include:
- Early boot code executed before the C runtime environment is setup.
- Exception handling code.
- Low-level code where the exact sequence of instructions executed on the CPU
matters, such as CPU reset sequences.
- Low-level code where specific system-level instructions must be used, such
as cache maintenance operations.
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