On Mon, Nov 9, 2015 at 10:38 PM, Christoph Hellwig <hch@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Mon, Nov 09, 2015 at 01:20:12PM -0800, Kees Cook wrote: >> Just to remind everyone: while we certainly want to clean these up in >> the code where possible, we still want to make the constification >> plugin part of the regular builds. We want to provide a >> secure-by-default build, even when vendors are adding their own >> out-of-tree code when producing Linux-based products. So, we'll always >> want to have the plugin as a back-stop for out-of-tree code, or places >> where const was accidentally missed upstream. > > Who is 'we'? While a plugin like this that warns would be very ueful I understand "we" here to mean people interested in the proactive defense of the Linux kernel, and by extension the Linux kernel community as a whole. :) > I strongly disagree with bloating the kernel tree with any infrastructure > primarily aimed at out of tree code. It's not "primarily aimed at out of tree code", that is simply an additional side-effect (though the need must be recognized: a billion android devices, and none of them are running a stock kernel). What it gets us is _coverage_. We can't make everything work just by static analyzers and checkpatch.pl runs (meaning the "backstop" comment above). Additionally, having the plugin infrastructure gets us the ability to do things that aren't presently possible (see the thread on the initify plugin, which can't be done in source alone). -Kees -- Kees Cook Chrome OS Security -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fbdev" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
