From owner-freebsd-arch Thu Jun 29 10:16: 5 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from dt052n3e.san.rr.com (dt052n3e.san.rr.com [204.210.33.62]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 75BF737BB6D for ; Thu, 29 Jun 2000 10:15:52 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from DougB@gorean.org) Received: from gorean.org (doug@master [10.0.0.2]) by dt052n3e.san.rr.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA07133; Thu, 29 Jun 2000 10:15:43 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from DougB@gorean.org) Message-ID: <395B843F.6274C58D@gorean.org> Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2000 10:15:43 -0700 From: Doug Barton Organization: Triborough Bridge & Tunnel Authority X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (X11; U; FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT-0628 i386) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Sheldon Hearn Cc: arch@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: mergemaster: Change in description of envar handling References: <40523.962297772@axl.ops.uunet.co.za> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Sheldon Hearn wrote: > > On Thu, 29 Jun 2000 09:44:34 MST, Doug Barton wrote: > > > No. I already conceded part of this point a while back when I > > developed the .mergemasterrc mechanism so that people could specify > > their own PATH (among other things), so there is already a way out of > > this for those who are not interested in specifying the full path to > > their PAGER. > > I have two things here that I'd like to mention. Firstly, this isn't > about concessions. Of course it is. If I wanted to do it the way you are suggesting, I would have done it already. Additionally, I have already stated specifically on more than one occasion that I do not want to do what you want for specific reasons, therefore you are asking me to make a concession. I don't mind that you're asking, but let's call a spade a spade. > I'm objecting to a lie: > > > > *** Your PAGER environment variable specifies 'less', but > > > I cannot execute it. > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > > Whether a lie or a partial truth, It's neither, it's the absolute truth. What might be helpful is an expansion of that message to include more details about why it's true. I will work on that tonight. It should be easy enough to do that, and update for less being in the base as well. > The second thing I want to mention is that building your own personal > philosophy on good practice into the utility puts it at odds with the > rest of the system. I've already argued this point ad nauseum. Because of what mergemaster does, the restrictive path is entirely appropriate. The fact that using the full path to a program specified in an environment variable is better from a security standpoint is not simply my opinion, and quite frankly, I don't really care that I'm "at odds with the rest of the system." As I mentioned, the person running mergemaster already has the option of (potentially) shooting themselves in the foot with the PATH variable, so if that message _really_ bothers them, they can fix it so that they never see it. > I'm suggesting that, instead of butting heads over what's right and > what's not, we just fix what mergemaster says about your policy > decision. So you don't want to argue the merits, you just want me to do what you want me to do? -- "Live free or die" - State motto of my ancestral homeland, New Hampshire Do YOU Yahoo!? To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message