Re: NACK Re: [PATCH 2/4] debian: Enable CET on amd64

Dave Chinner
2021-02-21T04:29:11Z

On Sun, Feb 21, 2021 at 04:02:55AM +0000, Dimitri John Ledkov wrote:
> The patch in question is specific to Ubuntu and was not submitted by
> me to neither Debian or Upstream.
>
> Indeed, this is very distro specific, because of all the other things
> that we turn on by default in our toolchain, dpkg build flags, and all
> other packages.
>
> This patch if taken at face value, will not enable CET. And will make
> the package start failing to build from source, when using older
> toolchains that don't support said flag.

Yes, that is exactly what I said when pointing out how to *support
this properly* so it doesn't break builds in environments that do
not support such functionality.

Having it as a configure option allows the configure script to -test
whether the toolchain supports it- and then either fail (enable=yes)
or not use it (enable=probe) and continue the build without it.

> It should not go upstream nor into debian.

There is no reason it cannot be implemented as a build option in the
upstream package. Then you can get rid of all your nasty hacks and
simply add --enable-cf-protections to your distro's configure
options.

And other distros that also support all this functionality can use
it to. Please play nice with others and do things the right way
instead of making silly claims about how "nobody else can use this"
when it's clear that they can if they also tick all the necessary
boxes.

Cheers,

Dave.
--
Dave Chinner
david@fromorbit.com