Re: [PATCH v2] memcmp.3: Recast security caveat

[Alejandro Colomar <alx@kernel.org>]

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Hi Branden,

On 2023-07-31 13:06, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> Hi Alex,
> 
> At 2023-07-30T19:31:39+0200, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
>> On 2023-07-30 17:31, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
>>> Use terminology more carefully.
>>>
>>> * Refer to the info sec property of confidentiality instead of saying,
>>>   vaguely, "security-critical".
>>>     https://informationsecurity.wustl.edu/items/\
>>>     confidentiality-integrity-and-availability-the-cia-triad/
>>> * Try not to confuse anyone who's studied the analysis of algorithms:
>>>   don't say "constant time" when "deterministic time" is meant.  The
>>>   time to perform the memory comparison remains linear (O(n)), not
>>>   constant (O(1)).
>>> * Tighten wording.
>>
>> I prefer 2 spaces between the bullet and the list contents.  See
>> man-pages(7).  Anyway, I accepted it this time.  :)
> 
> This had me confused for a while, since I had no tagged paragraphs in
> the patch.  You must mean in the commit message, too.

Yup; sorry; I did mean the commit message, yes.

>  I don't think
> that's documented...?  I guess it should go in the "CONTRIBUTING" file.

I didn't document it in CONTRIBUTING, because usually I don't receive
bulleted lists in commit messages.  Only you and Paul Eggert seem to
send of those (no problem with that, though; they are fine).

The only documentation is in man-pages(7), since man(7) source is the
only place where they are commonly used in the project:

   Lists
       There are different kinds of lists:

       [...]

       Bullet lists
              Elements are preceded by bullet symbols  (\[bu]).   Any‐
              thing  that  doesn’t fit elsewhere is usually covered by
              this type of list.

       [...]

       There should always be exactly 2 spaces between the list symbol
       and the elements.  This doesn’t apply to  "tagged  paragraphs",
       which use the default indentation rules.


> 
>> You need to quote your name with '"' due to the '.'.  I've found
>> some software has issues with it.  git-send-email(1) is one of them
>> (due to the perl library it uses).
> 
> Thanks--I fixed my vi ":ab" command to take care of this.

Nice; I didn't know of :ab :)

Cheers,
Alex

> 
> Regards,
> Branden

-- 
<http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>
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