Enabling "-Werror=format-security" by default

[Kevin Fenzi]

On Wed, 20 Nov 2013 21:27:39 +0530
Dhiru Kholia <dhiru.kholia at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> We are working on a proposal to enable "-Werror=format-security"
> compilation flag for all packages in Fedora.
> 
> Once this flag is enabled, GCC will refuse to compile code that could
> be vulnerable to a string format security flaw. For more details,
> please see https://fedorahosted.org/fesco/ticket/1185 page.
> 
> Enabling this option eliminates an entire class of security issues! To
> further understand why it is important to fix such bugs, please see
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Format-Security-FAQ page.
> 
> Currently, around 400 packages FTBFS if this flag is enabled. I am all
> set to start filing the bugs (once given the green signal). In
> addition, I am willing to help in patching these packages. I believe
> that this work is important and will benefit everyone (including
> upstream and other distributions).
> 
> I am attaching a sample Bugzilla bug report - this is what the actual
> bug reports will look like.

Great. Thanks for doing this. 

First... I'd suggest posting the list of packages and give maintainers
a week or two to just fix them. Then before filing anything you can run
a quick check to see which packages are still needing fixing. 

Looking at: 

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mass_bug_filing

I'd ask for a bit more in the bug report. ;) 

Might repeat the info from
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Format-Security-FAQ#How_do_I_fix_these_errors.3F
in the bug text (just to save people a trip to the wiki for such a
simple fixing process)

And I would add: 

Please fix this issue in rawhide with a patch (which you should submit
to upstream to merge moving forward). Please do a new build with the
fix in rawhide. Other releases do not need to be directly fixed, but
there should be no harm in pushing out this fix/patch with other needed
changes to those branches. 

And we might say: 

In the event you don't fix this bug before the next mass rebuild,
provenpackagers may step in and update your package(s) to fix this
issue. 

Otherwise looks great. ;) 

kevin
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