Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2001 14:28:32 -0700 From: Jordan Hubbard <jkh@osd.bsdi.com> To: alex@big.endian.de Cc: Antoine.Beaupre@ericsson.ca, jhb@FreeBSD.ORG, richy@apple.com, libh@FreeBSD.ORG, will@physics.purdue.edu Subject: Re: packagetool.tcl Message-ID: <20010619142832K.jkh@osd.bsdi.com> In-Reply-To: <20010619231951.B4230@zerogravity.kawo2.rwth-aachen.d> References: <3B2FAA21.4020307@lmc.ericsson.se> <20010619161234.Q65489@bohr.physics.purdue.edu> <20010619231951.B4230@zerogravity.kawo2.rwth-aachen.d>
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It's a good goal, but don't be surprised if you end up having to
compromise a fair bit in achieving it. You can't simply "wrap"
old packages because they suffer from several problems:
1. The PLIST and other descriptive meta-data in old packages
is a significant subset of the libh meta-data, and you may
not find it to be expressive enough in all cases to get close
enough to a 1-to-1 mapping for an old package to work as a new
package.
2. The PLISTs allow arbitrary executables and scripts to be run
as part of their actions. For some arguments that a PLIST entry
wants to pass to system(3), like mv(1) or cp(1) lines, you may
be able to convert it to a plausible TCL command which will then
be appropriately checked against the package or system's
current security policy. This you can probably do in 70-80% of
the cases if you're willing to put in the work of parsing the
PLIST arguments. The others will have to be rejected because
a very STRONG part of libh's advertised feature set is that the
administrator now gets total control over what a package will
attempt to do to their system. You can't simply propagate
arbitrary shell commands forward or you've seriously violated
the trust model. In that respect, it would be better for
old packages to stay in their old format so that the admin
has to explicitly run pkg_add(1) instead and know that in so
doing, [s]he's back in the bad old world of no seat belts.
- Jordan
From: Alexander Langer <alex@big.endian.de>
Subject: Re: packagetool.tcl
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2001 23:19:51 +0200
> Thus spake Will Andrews (will@physics.purdue.edu):
>
> > > I think supporting the old package format will somehow be mandatory, or
> > > it will create total panic.
> > Absolutely. I think having a little subroutine in libh to
> > "convert" the old package format to the new would be a good idea.
>
> Good idea. It's on the TODO list now.
>
> Alex
>
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