Re: [PATCH v2 2/2] arm64: insn: drop NOP from steppable hint list

[Mark Rutland]

On Tue, Feb 17, 2026 at 07:08:55PM +0530, Khaja Hussain Shaik Khaji wrote:
> NOP is already handled via instruction emulation and does not require
> single-stepping. Drop it from aarch64_insn_is_steppable_hint().
> 
> Signed-off-by: Khaja Hussain Shaik Khaji <khaja.khaji@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
>  arch/arm64/include/asm/insn.h | 1 -
>  1 file changed, 1 deletion(-)
> 
> diff --git a/arch/arm64/include/asm/insn.h b/arch/arm64/include/asm/insn.h
> index e1d30ba99d01..9429f76906e0 100644
> --- a/arch/arm64/include/asm/insn.h
> +++ b/arch/arm64/include/asm/insn.h
> @@ -456,7 +456,6 @@ static __always_inline bool aarch64_insn_is_steppable_hint(u32 insn)
>  	case AARCH64_INSN_HINT_BTIC:
>  	case AARCH64_INSN_HINT_BTIJ:
>  	case AARCH64_INSN_HINT_BTIJC:
> -	case AARCH64_INSN_HINT_NOP:
>  		return true;
>  	default:
>  		return false;

The intent is that aarch64_insn_is_steppable_hint() says whether an
instruction is safe to step, not whether it *must* be stepped. I think
we can leave NOP here unless this is causing some functional problem?

Mark.