Re: [libvirt] [PATCH] Ensure virStrerror always sets an error string

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 11:27:28AM -0600, Eric Blake wrote:
> [adding bug-gnulib]
> 
> On 05/18/2011 11:07 AM, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> > strerror_r() is free to not set any error string, if the passed
> > errno is not valid. It may, however, still return a pointer to
> > the original passed in buffer. This resulting in random garbage
> > from the stack being present as the error string.
> 
> Indeed.  However, I'm inclined to NACK the libvirt patch, because:
> 
> Right now, gnulib guarantees that strerror() always gives a useful
> result (non-empty string for all errno values, even though POSIX allows
> an empty string), but the strerror_r-posix module is not making those
> same guarantees.
> 
> Therefore, I argue that this is a bug in gnulib.  We should be changing
> the strerror_r-posix module to guarantee sane behavior, rather than just
> bare-minimum compliance, even if that means replacing strerror_r on a
> few more platforms.

Yeah, if gnulib wants to fix this, that's fine with me.

Daniel
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