Re: Hardened toolchain

[Katherine Cox-Buday]

zimoun <zimon.toutoune@gmail.com> writes:

> On Tue, 29 Mar 2022 at 12:15, Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> wrote:
>
>> Stack smashing protection (SSP) may incur measurable run-time
>> overhead though so enabling that one by default may be less
>> consensual.
>
> That’s true and it could be an issue for HPC practitioners.  However,
> quoting Wikipedia [1], for what it is worth:
>
> All Fedora packages are compiled with -fstack-protector since Fedora
> Core 5, and -fstack-protector-strong since Fedora 20.[19][20] Most
> packages in Ubuntu are compiled with -fstack-protector since 6.10.[21]
> Every Arch Linux package is compiled with -fstack-protector since
> 2011.[22] All Arch Linux packages built since 4 May 2014 use
> -fstack-protector-strong.[23] Stack protection is only used for some
> packages in Debian,[24] and only for the FreeBSD base system since
> 8.0.[25] Stack protection is standard in certain operating systems,
> including OpenBSD,[26] Hardened Gentoo[27] and DragonFly BSD.

For me at least, this is a compelling argument for also defaulting to more 
secure, but possibly slower, build flags. (Full disclosure: I would personally 
benefit from the security over performance model of defaults).

But I think we should state our reasons plainly in the documentation, and 
provide an easy way for those who need performance to "recompile the world".

-- 
Katherine