Re: [PATCH 1/6] maintenance: add get_random_minute()

From: Taylor Blau <me@ttaylorr.com>
Date: Aug 8, 2023, 20:04 UTC
Message-ID: <ZNKfxOWJAuJ5DxAN@nand.local>
In-Reply-To: <8854e369-fabb-4044-a06c-eaf5b9fbde4a@github.com>

On Tue, Aug 08, 2023 at 01:28:50PM -0400, Derrick Stolee wrote:

Show 9 quoted lines

> > So I think this is kind of outside the scope of your series, but I
> > wonder if we should have a git_rand() that automatically initializes the
> > PRNG with the value of getpid()? Then multiple callers can grab random
> > values at will without reinitializing the PRNG.
>
> I see you're moving ahead with removing the srand() from the lockfile code,
> so I'll focus on creating a `git_rand()` that centralizes the use of
> srand(), but won't touch the code in the lockfile so your patch applies
> independently.

That thread may have progressed a little since you last looked at it.

Instead of using srand() and rand() (which would make sense to wrap with git_rand() as you propose), we can simplify our lives by using a CSPRNG, which only gets initialized once, as is already the case with csprng_bytes().

I think Junio is picking up a lightly modified version of my patch there, see [1].

Thanks, Taylor

[1]: https://lore.kernel.org/git/ZNKfKs1mLQhnybvF@nand.local/