Re: sharutils does not build with -Werror=format-security

[Bruce Korb]

Hi Eric,

On 10/14/13 07:06, Eric Blake wrote:
> > >        else
> > > -      error (0, errno, _("Cannot get current directory name"));
> > > +      error (0, errno, "%s", _("Cannot get current directory name"));
>
> but in THIS form, xgettext sees no % mark, so it does NOT mark the .po
> file, and therefore gettext() no longer attempts to sanitize the
> translation, and a translator can sneak in any % mark.  Yes, you can
> argue that xgettext could be made smarter to properly annotate
> string-literal formats with a printf annotation to force runtime
> sanitization of the transalation, but for now, adding a "%s" format
> argument is the easiest way to shut up the existing tool chain rather
> than waiting for a fixed toolchain.

Then in this particular case, you are arguing for muddying up code
to accommodate deficiencies in the code analysis?  I definitely
prefer the "do it properly and let the tools get fixed" approach.
To that end, I went to the trouble of adding -Wformat-contains-nul
warning to GCC.

I agree with Paul's agreement with me:

> So you're right that if FOO is safe to use as
> a format string, then _(FOO) should be safe too.

http://autogen.sourceforge.net/data/sharutils-4.13.6pre3.tar.xz

I'll actually release 4.13.6 "RSN".  Cheers - Bruce