On 2021-06-23 at 22:58:09, Jonathan Tan wrote: > > If we do add this feature (which, as I said, I'm opposed to) and we > > decide to store it in a ref, that ref should not be a normal branch by > > default (it should be a special one-level ref, like refs/stash or such), > > Any particular reason not to expose it as a branch (besides following > from your general idea that a user should seek out such a feature and > not have it presented to them up-front)? Branches are for the main code of the project. While it's possible to have orphan branches that do other things, I think that's in general an anti-pattern, and using a special ref for things which are separate and independent from the main code of the repository would be a more elegant solution. > > In addition, there should be an advice.* option that allows people to > > turn this off once and for all, and it should be clearly documented. > > Ideally it should be off by default. > > I don't think this would be considered "advice" like the other options, > but having an option to turn this off once and for all makes sense. > Making it off by default would probably mean that projects that use such > hooks would recommend cloning with "git -c my-config=1 clone $URL", but > perhaps that's OK. Sure, I'm not picky about what it looks like in "advice" vs something else. I think forcing projects to explicitly opt-in to this behavior means that the social engineering and security problems are much reduced, and while I'm still not wild about the idea, I would feel much better about it. > > This also makes me deeply nervous for much of the same reasons. There > > are situations where e.g. ignoring whitespace can lead to security > > problems in code review (think Python), and in general it's hard to > > reason about all the ways people can do malicious things. Typically > > adding untrusted config ends poorly (think of all the modeline > > vulnerabilities in Vim). > > > > I'd definitely want support for this to be off with no prompting by > > default. > > To use your example, the model we're proposing is more of only using the > modelines from sources we trust - as opposed to ensuring that all > possible options set by modelines are benign. Admittedly, the > administrator of the source may have difficulty ensuring that bad code > doesn't slip through code review, for example, but that is a problem > they already deal with (at least for projects with any form of > executable code in them, e.g. production code or a build script). As I think I've previously mentioned, I don't want to receive configuration of my development environment from sources I trust. Even at work, I don't want the repositories I work with to modify my development environment in this way. I tend to have a highly customized configuration that breaks many people's expectations about tooling, so the cases that this isn't a security problem (in repositories I trust) can still result in a functionality problem. Also, since we don't know what repositories the user trusts, the only safe assumption is that the user trusts nothing unless they explicitly tell us. -- brian m. carlson (he/him or they/them) Toronto, Ontario, CA
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