Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: Tla spork

[Tom Lord]

    > From: address@hidden (James Blackwell)


Sure but.... I guess what it comes down to is that environment-passed
parameters are hard to control because they (by design) violate lots
of abstraction boundaries.  Their usefulness is not 0 but it is very
limited.

Please don't junk up arch with crap that creates unfortunate
surprises.

-t




    > Tom Lord wrote:
    > > /usr/.../bin/tla-wrapped:
    > >
    > >   #!/bin/sh
    > >
    > >   tla --hat "$ARCH_HAT" "$@"
    > >
    > > ?
    > >
    > > (I generally don't want that kind of environment-variable sensitivity
    > > in tla itself because, while, sure, in some cases its handy, in other
    > > cases it is an easy source of bugs, flakiness, exploits, etc...)
    > 
    > I imagine it closer to the following (I'm playing loose with the code
    > here): 
    > 
    > my_hat = 0
    > 
    > if ( valid_hat(getenv("ARCH_HAT")))
    >     my_hat = get_env("ARCH_HAT")
    > 
    > if (! my_hat)
    >   my_hat = get_arch_hat()
    > 
    > if (! my_hat)
    >   my_hat = passed_hat
    > 
    > if (! my_hat)
    >    panic("You're not wearing any hats!")
    > 
    > 
    > bugs:
    >   I don't think we'd have a problem here. Sure, if tla didn't
    >   provide library support to look up the my-idish stuff, or if tla
    >   was not using it consistantly, I'd agree. But tla does use the library
    >   routines consistantly, so we don't need to worry about either bugs or
    >   flakiness (a subset of bugs)
    > 
    > exploits: 
    > I think that we're safe here because of the lack of statically defined
    > buffers. Somebody thought ahead of that problem and wrote hackerlab.
    > 
    > -- 
    > James Blackwell          Try something fun: For the next 24 hours, give
    > Smile more!              each person you meet a compliment!
    > 
    > GnuPG (ID 06357400) AAE4 8C76 58DA 5902 761D  247A 8A55 DA73 0635 7400
    > 
    > 
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