Re: The portability sacred cow

Message-ID	<muqe2b-9pk.ln1@wilbur.25thandClement.com> (permalink)
From	<william@wilbur.25thandClement.com>
Subject	Re: The portability sacred cow
Newsgroups	comp.lang.c
References	<lj1db3$ieu$1@speranza.aioe.org>
Date	2014-04-20 23:37 -0700

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jacob navia <jacob@spamsink.net> wrote:
<snip>
> Because some systems had a very slow "malloc" function and the OpenSSL 
> team decided to write their own malloc/free replacements.

Well, Windows was notorious for it's slow malloc. Still is, AFAIK. But
that's kind of beside the point, 'cause nobody should be substituting malloc
that way throughout their entire application specfically because of the
attack mitigation measures that have become popular. Also because allocators
these days will return memory to the OS.

> Also in the name of portability, all kinds of cruft was left cluttering
> the code to cater systems like VMS, for instance, that nobody uses today.

Actually, there are plenty of VMS users today, and they have continued to
submit patches to OpenSSL up until this year. Whether it's worth maintaining
that port in the mainline code is another matter.

> Because, portability has a REAL COST, in terms of levelling by the lower 
> common denominator, making for a conservative attitude (that fits this 
> newsgroup very well) that hinders progress in software development and 
> provokes all kinds of cruft to be added to ALL implementation of a 
> software to cater for the bug of some system.
> 
> Portability should be weighted with USABILITY and STABILITY, two things 
> that we never discuss since they tend to be non portable :-)
> 
> In my opinion, portability comes AFTER STABILITY and USABILITY, well 
> after those.

In that case perhaps you should only use OpenBSD. They have nice features
like an async-signal-safe snprintf, whereas Linux snprintf uses heap memory
for the simplest formatting (which means you can't depend on it to never
fail, even when you know it shouldn't, which is why glibc's recommendation
to use snprintf instead of strlcpy is idiotic). And Windows _snprintf is
just a horror because it has all the wrong semantics.

OpenBSD puts a lot of effort into the small stuff, something that very few
other platforms bother with. And yet, nobody is advocating only targetting
OpenBSD. Linux and Windows are horrible targets if your primary concern is
security, because those platforms emphasize backwaard compatability and
performance more than OpenBSD. For example, OpenBSD just recently changed
time_t to 64-bits on all platforms, including 32-bits platforms. That would
be unthinkable on Windows or Linux.

Thread

The portability sacred cow jacob navia <jacob@spamsink.net> - 2014-04-20 23:14 +0200
  Re: The portability sacred cow jacob navia <jacob@spamsink.net> - 2014-04-20 23:34 +0200
    Re: The portability sacred cow Geoff <geoff@invalid.invalid> - 2014-04-20 21:20 -0700
      Re: The portability sacred cow gazelle@shell.xmission.com (Kenny McCormack) - 2014-04-21 04:35 +0000
      Re: The portability sacred cow Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2014-04-21 05:10 +0000
        Re: The portability sacred cow gazelle@shell.xmission.com (Kenny McCormack) - 2014-04-21 05:31 +0000
        Re: The portability sacred cow <william@wilbur.25thandClement.com> - 2014-04-20 23:50 -0700
  Re: The portability sacred cow jacob navia <jacob@spamsink.net> - 2014-04-20 23:39 +0200
  Re: The portability sacred cow <william@wilbur.25thandClement.com> - 2014-04-20 23:37 -0700
    Re: The portability sacred cow Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2014-04-21 20:25 +1200
  Re: The portability sacred cow glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2014-04-21 07:10 +0000
  Re: The portability sacred cow Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2014-04-21 20:32 +1200
  Re: The portability sacred cow David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2014-04-21 16:46 +0200
    Re: The portability sacred cow <william@wilbur.25thandClement.com> - 2014-04-21 10:04 -0700
      Re: The portability sacred cow David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2014-04-21 21:02 +0200
  Re: The portability sacred cow Malcolm McLean <malcolm.mclean5@btinternet.com> - 2014-04-22 02:52 -0700
    Re: The portability sacred cow Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2014-04-22 23:18 +1200
      Re: The portability sacred cow gazelle@shell.xmission.com (Kenny McCormack) - 2014-04-22 11:49 +0000
    Re: The portability sacred cow jacob navia <jacob@spamsink.net> - 2014-04-22 14:48 +0200
    Re: The portability sacred cow Richard <rgrdev_@gmail.com> - 2014-04-22 14:58 +0100
      Re: The portability sacred cow Malcolm McLean <malcolm.mclean5@btinternet.com> - 2014-04-22 07:37 -0700
    Re: The portability sacred cow luser droog <luser.droog@gmail.com> - 2014-04-22 21:52 -0700
  Re: The portability sacred cow Johannes Bauer <dfnsonfsduifb@gmx.de> - 2014-04-22 16:58 +0200
    Re: The portability sacred cow jacob navia <jacob@spamsink.net> - 2014-04-22 17:24 +0200
      Re: The portability sacred cow jacob navia <jacob@spamsink.net> - 2014-04-22 17:25 +0200
    Re: The portability sacred cow Gareth Owen <gwowen@gmail.com> - 2014-04-22 19:11 +0100
  Re: The portability sacred cow jacob navia <jacob@spamsink.net> - 2014-04-22 21:59 +0200
    Re: The portability sacred cow Malcolm McLean <malcolm.mclean5@btinternet.com> - 2014-04-22 14:02 -0700
      Re: The portability sacred cow jacob navia <jacob@spamsink.net> - 2014-04-23 01:04 +0200
        Re: The portability sacred cow <william@wilbur.25thandClement.com> - 2014-04-22 17:52 -0700
          Re: The portability sacred cow <william@wilbur.25thandClement.com> - 2014-04-22 19:15 -0700
      Re: The portability sacred cow jacob navia <jacob@spamsink.net> - 2014-04-23 01:10 +0200
      Re: The portability sacred cow Thomas Jahns <jahns@idontlikespam.dkrz.de> - 2014-04-23 09:53 +0200
        Re: The portability sacred cow gazelle@shell.xmission.com (Kenny McCormack) - 2014-04-25 02:21 +0000
          Re: The portability sacred cow JohnF <john@please.see.sig.for.email.com> - 2014-04-25 06:36 +0000
            Re: The portability sacred cow Richard <rgrdev_@gmail.com> - 2014-04-25 14:02 +0200
            Re: The portability sacred cow gazelle@shell.xmission.com (Kenny McCormack) - 2014-04-25 18:17 +0000
              Re: The portability sacred cow Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2014-04-25 18:27 +0000
                Re: The portability sacred cow Malcolm McLean <malcolm.mclean5@btinternet.com> - 2014-04-25 21:57 -0700
                Re: The portability sacred cow Stephen Sprunk <stephen@sprunk.org> - 2014-04-26 00:02 -0500
                Re: The portability sacred cow Richard <rgrdev_@gmail.com> - 2014-04-26 11:35 +0200
                Re: The portability sacred cow JohnF <john@please.see.sig.for.email.com> - 2014-04-26 06:04 +0000
              Re: The portability sacred cow jacob navia <jacob@spamsink.net> - 2014-04-25 23:08 +0200
                Re: The portability sacred cow glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2014-04-25 21:52 +0000
          Re: The portability sacred cow Thomas Jahns <jahns@idontlikespam.dkrz.de> - 2014-04-25 11:27 +0200
            Re: The portability sacred cow Richard <rgrdev_@gmail.com> - 2014-04-25 14:03 +0200
              Re: The portability sacred cow gazelle@shell.xmission.com (Kenny McCormack) - 2014-04-25 18:18 +0000
              Re: The portability sacred cow "Bill Cunningham" <nospam@nspam.invalid> - 2014-04-26 20:04 -0400
            Re: The portability sacred cow Malcolm McLean <malcolm.mclean5@btinternet.com> - 2014-04-25 06:05 -0700
              Re: The portability sacred cow Thomas Jahns <jahns@idontlikespam.dkrz.de> - 2014-04-25 17:43 +0200
                Re: The portability sacred cow Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2014-04-25 10:48 -0700

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