Re: PCRE v2 compile error, was Re: What's cooking in git.git (May 2017, #01; Mon, 1)

From: brian m. carlson <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>
Date: May 8, 2017, 23:32 UTC
Message-ID: <20170508233224.udpuuzlygjpsjogt@genre.crustytoothpaste.net>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqpofj7rim.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>

On Mon, May 08, 2017 at 04:10:41PM +0900, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 17 quoted lines

> Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> writes:
> 
> > This won't be in my next PCRE submission, but I have a path locally to
> > simply import PCRE into git.git as compat/pcre2, so it can be compiled
> > with NO_PCRE=Y similar to how NO_REGEX=Y works.
> >
> > This will hopefully address your concerns partially, i.e. when you do
> > want to try it out it'll be easier.
> 
> Eek, please don't.
> 
> Until pcre2 becomes _so_ stable that all reasonable distros give
> choice to the end-users to install it easily in a packaged form,
> such a "not a fork, but a copy" will be a moving target that I'd
> rather not to have in compat/.  IOW, our compat/$pkg should be a
> last resort to help those on distros that are so hard to convince to
> carry the version/variant of $pkg we would like to use.

PCRE and PCRE2 also tend to have a lot of security updates, so I would prefer if we didn't import them into the tree. It is far better for users to use their distro's packages for PCRE, as it means they get automatic security updates even if they're using an old Git.

We shouldn't consider shipping anything with a remotely frequent history of security updates in our tree, since people very frequently run old or ancient versions of Git.

-- 
brian m. carlson / brian with sandals: Houston, Texas, US
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