[Nagiosplug-devel] Libtap included in distribution

[Andreas Ericsson]

For some reason your MUA double-wrapped everything.
Could you look into your settings, Ton?

ton.voon at altinity.com wrote:
> 
> The 3rd party code in question here is only for testing purposes. It is
> only enabled with a configure flag, so, outside of development, will not
> usually be used.
> 

Then why is it needed? If it's just for tinderbox builds, why not install
it on the various tinderboxen? If it's not for tinderbox builds, why ship
it at all? If someone needs to test libtap functionality they can jolly
well install libtap imo.

> A more entrenched example would be GNU lib - we embed their code (at their
> recommendation).

While we're at it, I'm pretty much against this too. Plugins, weighing
in at an average of 555.57 LoC, that can't be made to run without a
rather large compatibility library need to be looked over. Especially
when the functions gnulib typically provides are along the lines of
strndup(), vasnprintf(), full_write() et al. As it is, the compat lib
is more than twice the size of the code it's providing compatibility
for.

> Theoretically, a security exposure could be found there.
> But we have a very simple process to update their software and cut a new
> package. There's no way I would want this project, or any others that use
> gnulib, to have to recode all the functionality they provide.
> 

It'll be even easier when you move to git, as you can then use gnulib
as ae submodule (Jim Meyering who maintains gnulib is an avid git-fan
and contributor) ;-)

> I can't guarantee that we will not include 3rd party software in future. We
> have to make a judgement on whether a 3rd party piece of code will provide
> us features or cross platform capabilities we need without re-inventing the
> wheel. That's a compromise we have to make. However, when possible, we will
> allow configure options to disable 3rd party code.
> 

Sometimes, reinventing the wheel (or importing a handful of 10-line
functions) is preferrable to including the whole shebang.

I should probably shut up though. It's friday and beer is flowing
freely within the office walls :-)

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   andreas.ericsson at op5.se
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se
Tel: +46 8-230225                  Fax: +46 8-230231