On Tue, Jul 26, 2022 at 10:50 PM Allen Baum <allen.baum@...> wrote:

So " In general every new extension will be a separate new chapter."

But of course, but.... will they always be added to the end of the spec, or could they be inserted into the middle?

The latter will, cause renumbering of chapters, and many, many references to those sections to become obsolete

in docs all over the ecosystem. 

I'm reviewing the RISC-V certification test questions, and authors must point to references for their answers.

If sections change numbers, then a lot of those test questions will need to be rewritten. 

 I'm sure that won't be the only place, and tracking them all down will be a pain.

Using chapter numbers instead of chapter titles for cross-reference purposes seems quite brittle (as you're pointing out) and undesirable.  And that constancy of all chapter (and section numbers) going from the 2019 Unpriv and Priv specs to the 2021 specs has already been broken.

If it was me, I would say that the certification test questions should use chapter (and section) titles (and avoid chapter/section numbers).  Otherwise one way or another I would bet that their spec cross-references aren't going to survive 100% over the next 5-10 years.

Greg