Re: [PATCHES] ImageMagick security updates without grafting

[Mark H Weaver]

Hi Maxime,

Maxime Devos <maximedevos@telenet.be> writes:

> On Sun, 2021-03-28 at 17:37 -0400, Mark H Weaver wrote:
>> One thing to be very careful about is to only use 'gtk-doc/stable',
>> 'dblatex/stable', and 'imagemagick/stable' in native-inputs, and
>> moreover to make sure that no references to these */stable packages
>> remain in any package outputs.
>> 
>> Of course, if any package retains references to its 'native-inputs',
>> that's always a bug, but I wouldn't be surprised if such bugs exist in
>> Guix.  Such bugs might be relatively harmless now (except when
>> cross-compiling), but they could become a security bug if a package
>> retains a reference to 'imagemagick/stable'.
>
> I'll be careful!
>
>> On my own system and user profile, which includes GNOME, I'm glad to
>> report that I have *no* references to 'imagemagick' at all, not even to
>> its newest release, and that's my strong preference.
>
> Note to self, before I forget how to test this:
>
> guix build $PACKAGES
> # maybe guix build $PACKAGES --no-grafts?
> guix graph --type=references $PACKAGES
> # ^ look in output for "imagemagick".

For the record, it seems that this command gives false positives.  As
pointed out in <https://bugs.gnu.org/47479>, the output of that command
suggests that 'inkscape' retains references to 'imagemagick', but that
turns out to be false, at least on my system.

I suppose the behavior of "guix graph" here makes sense, and is likely
_not_ a bug, because IIUC "guix graph" does its work without requiring
'imagemagick' to be built, and therefore it cannot know whether
imagemagick's build system would retain a reference to a native-input
during its build process.  IMO, it would be inappropriate for "guix
graph" to *assume* that references to native-inputs will not retained.

The tool I expect to be reliable here is "guix gc -R".  For example, I
check for references to 'imagemagick' in my system and user profiles
with the following commands:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
mhw@jojen ~$ guix gc -R $(readlink /run/current-system) | grep -i imagemagick
mhw@jojen ~$ guix gc -R $(readlink -f ~/.guix-profile) | grep -i imagemagick
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

     Thanks,
       Mark