Re: gnulib and distros

[Bruno Haible]

Colin Watson wrote on 2008-11-18:
>     I'd much rather live in a world where people use
>     Gnulib and so are willing to use non-portable functions like
>     asprintf, canonicalize_file_name, openat, and so on than our current
>     world which is still full of stupid vulnerabilities due to people
>     getting sprintf or realpath buffer sizes wrong or race conditions
>     while traversing directory trees.

Excellent point! I'm including this argument in a new advocacy section
in the gnulib manual.


2008-12-06  Bruno Haible  <address@hidden>

        Advocacy documentation.
        * doc/gnulib-intro.texi (Benefits): New section.
        * doc/gnulib.texi: Update.

*** doc/gnulib-intro.texi.orig  2008-12-06 12:56:52.000000000 +0100
--- doc/gnulib-intro.texi       2008-12-06 12:56:07.000000000 +0100
***************
*** 1,3 ****
--- 1,37 ----
+ @node Benefits
+ @section Benefits of using Gnulib
+ 
+ Gnulib is useful to enhance various aspects of a package:
+ 
+ @itemize @bullet
+ @item
+ Portability: With Gnulib, a package maintainer can program against the
+ POSIX and GNU libc APIs and nevertheless expect good portability to
+ platforms that don't implement POSIX.
+ 
+ @item
+ Maintainability: When a package uses modules from Gnulib instead of code
+ written specifically for that package, the maintainer has less code to
+ maintain.
+ 
+ @item
+ Security: Gnulib provides functions that are immune against vulnerabilities
+ that plagues the uses of the corresponding commonplace functions. For
+ example, @code{asprintf}, @code{canonicalize_file_name} are not affected
+ by buffer sizing problems that affect @code{sprintf}, @code{realpath}.
+ @code{openat} does not have the race conditions that @code{open} has. Etc.
+ 
+ @item
+ Reliability: Gnulib provides functions that combine a call to a system
+ function with a check of the result. Examples are @code{xalloc},
+ @code{xprintf}, @code{xstrtod}, @code{xgetcwd}.
+ 
+ @item
+ Structure: Gnulib offers a way to structure code into modules, typically
+ one include file, one source code file, and one autoconf macro for each
+ functionality. Modularity helps maintainability.
+ @end itemize
+ 
  @node Library vs Reusable Code
  @section Library vs. Reusable Code
  
*** doc/gnulib.texi.orig        2008-12-06 12:56:52.000000000 +0100
--- doc/gnulib.texi     2008-12-06 12:34:41.000000000 +0100
***************
*** 78,83 ****
--- 78,84 ----
  @address@hidden<bug-gnulib at gnu dot org>}}.
  @end macro
  
+ 
  @node Introduction
  @chapter Introduction
  
***************
*** 96,101 ****
--- 97,103 ----
  @end itemize
  
  @menu
+ * Benefits::
  * Library vs Reusable Code::
  * Portability and Application Code::
  * Modules::