Your message dated Fri, 11 Aug 2017 12:44:51 -0700 with message-id <87o9rlx51o....@iris.silentflame.com> and subject line Closing inactive Policy bugs has caused the Debian Bug report #267142, regarding Specify allowable behavior for /bin/sh shell builtins to be marked as done.
This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with. If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith. (NB: If you are a system administrator and have no idea what this message is talking about, this may indicate a serious mail system misconfiguration somewhere. Please contact ow...@bugs.debian.org immediately.) -- 267142: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=267142 Debian Bug Tracking System Contact ow...@bugs.debian.org with problems
--- Begin Message ---Package: debian-policy Version: 3.6.1.1 Severity: normal This arose out of David Weinehall's search for the use of non-Posix features in package scripts. See bug #260092 for an example, and #264176 for some of his discussion with me. Policy 10.4 reminds that "The standard shell interpreter /bin/sh can be a symbolic link to any POSIX compatible shell....Thus, shell scripts specifying /bin/sh as interpreter should only use POSIX features." And we will note section 6.1, which says: "Programs called from maintainer scripts should not normally have a path prepended to them." If you look at bugs #260092 and #264176, you'll see that the complaint is that the script is using -o and -a as arguments to "test". It is true that -o and -a are not specified by Posix "test". But--and this is absolutely crucial--Posix "test" is not part of the Posix shell specification. As far as Posix is concerned, "test" is simply one more program. Because of policy 6.1, we are not supposed to write /usr/bin/test. What is going on here is that Posix allows a conformant shell to implement programs as builtins. ANY program. ANY program WHATSOEVER! Ain't that a kicker? The assumption of Posix is that the shell and the utilities are being written and distributed by the same people, and that the shell, when it builds something in, will build it in in a way which matches the behavior of the utility. But this assumption is (oddly!) nowhere specified by Posix. If you install "dash" as /bin/sh on a Debian system, then you break this assumption. >From the Posix perspective, there are two kinds of utilities: those specified to exist by Posix, and those which are extra. A Posix-conformant shell is allowed to buildin *either* of those. (And shells liberally take advantage of this, of course.) Posix assumes, but does not require, that you won't make a buildin which is inconsistent with a regular program. For a Posix-specified utility, it is obvious that a Posix-conformant shell (if it builds it in) must build in a Posix-conformant implementation of the utility. And dash does do this. But it also builds in one which is inconsistent with /usr/bin/test on Debian, and that's a problem. But I hasten to note that a Posix-conformant shell is allowed to build in *anything*, and if it's not a Posix-specified utility that's being built in, then it can have *any behavior whatsoever*. For example, a Posix-compatible shell may build in a shell command named "debconf", such that when you run it, it tries deletes everything in /etc. Since my maintainer scripts are require to work with any Posix-compatible shell whatsoever, I cannot call debconf from the PATH. Given Policy as it currently exists, the only way to reliably conform to section 10.4 is either: * Never use /bin/sh, ever, as a shell interpereter; or * Call all programs with fully specified paths to avoid unexpected builtins. The second of those solutions conflicts with section 6.1's requirement not to normally prepend a path. The former seems suboptimal, but does work. However, Policy as currently worded makes it sound like it is ever safe to use /bin/sh, and it is not, ever. David Weinehall proposed one possible fix, to extend 10.4 to restrict the use not only of non-Posix shell features, but also non-Posix features in other commands, if those commands are "historically built in". This is unworkably vague, but can be toned up to something that does work; see the third option below. I believe there are four reasonable sorts of policy amendment that would solve this problem: OPTION 1: Change 10.4 to require that scripts never use /bin/sh. OPTION 2: Restrict /bin/sh to a specified list of shells, rather than "any POSIX compatible shell", and require that shell scripts run correctly on that list. OPTION 3: Extend 10.4 to require the use only of Posix features not only for the shell, but for a specified list of other commands; that list would be based upon which commands are in fact being built-in by shells like dash in ways which are inconsistent with the binaries in /usr/bin. OPTION 4: Change section 10.4 to require the use of full pathnames for everything which is not ordered by Posix to be builtin to the shell; remove the "no pathnames on commands" direction in section 6.1. I strongly prefer option 2. Options 1 and 3 seem ok to me, with a slight preference for option 1 because it is more maintainable. Option 4 is horrible, and you don't need me to say why. -- System Information: Debian Release: 3.1 APT prefers unstable APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing') Architecture: powerpc (ppc) Kernel: Linux 2.4.20-ben10 Locale: LANG=en_US, LC_CTYPE=en_US -- no debconf information
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--- Begin Message ---control: user debian-pol...@packages.debian.org control: usertag -1 +obsolete control: tag -1 +wontfix Russ Allbery and I did a round of in-person bug triage at DebConf17 and we are closing this bug as inactive. The reasons for closing fall into the following categories, from most frequent to least frequent: - issue is appropriate for Policy, there is a consensus on how to fix the problem, but preparing the patch is very time-consuming and no-one has volunteered to do it, and we do not judge the issue to be important enough to keep an open bug around; - issue is appropriate for Policy but there does not yet exist a consensus on what should change, and no recent discussion. A fresh discussion might allow us to reach consensus, and the messages in the old bug are unlikely to help very much; or - issue is not appropriate for Policy. If you feel this bug is still relevant and want to restart the discussion, you can re-open the bug. However, please consider instead opening a new bug with a message that summarises and condenses the previous discussion, updates the report for the current state of Debian, and makes clear exactly what you think should change. A lot of these old bugs have long side tangents and numerous messages, and that old discussion is not necessarily helpful for figuring out what Debian Policy should say today. -- Sean Whittonsignature.asc
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