Re: [PATCH 2/2] reftable/stack: accept insecure random bytes

> Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:
> 
> > Yet a platform replaces it with a function that returns an error or
> > aborts?  What kind of nonsense is that?  Do we really need to cater
> > to such an insanity?
> >
> > Use of git_rand() here goes backwards against the more recent trend
> > in reftable/ directory to wean the code off of the rest of Git by
> > getting rid of unnecessary dependency, doesn't it?

> > I think [PATCH 1/2] makes sense regardless, though.  But shouldn't
> > we be pushing back this step, with "fix your rand(3)"?
> >
> > Thanks.
> 
> Ah, I misread the patch.  It has two hunks, and what I said applies
> to the earlier one, but the later one is already contaminated with
> git_rand(), and that is what is failing, i.e. it is not a nonsense
> platform replacing rand() with something that can fail.
> 
> It may still make sense to drop the first hunk, and consider how to
> proceed when you further want to reduce the unnecessary dependencies
> for external users of the reftable library, though.  Are there
> correctness implications if git_rand() in format_name() yields non
> random results (like, always using "rnd = 0" instead of calling
> git_rand())?  I seriously hope not.  And if there is no correctness
> implications, perhaps we can replace it with rand() or even constant
> "0"?