patch for gnatsweb

[Dirk Bergstrom]

howdy.  i've been hacking on gnatsweb for the last year here at
juniper networks, and i've made a lot of changes and bugfixes.  i
finally found the time to merge my changes with the current
development tree, and i'd like to get them rolled into the main line,
so that i can take advantage of further work, and so that others can
benefit from my work.

juniper has been using gnats 4.0a in production for almost a year (bob
manson did much of the development when he worked here, so we had a
secret weapon), so this code all works with 4.0.  well, with 4.0 as of
january of this year, plus mdb's patch to have gnatsd report user
access level.  i haven't tried the latest sources, but looking over
the changelog, it looks like most of the changes would be transparent
to gnatsweb.  i've tested this version, and it's stable (it's now our
production gnatsweb).

executive summary of my changes:

*) use strict, and all that it implies.

*) field and category descriptions (from dbconfig and categories
 files) now displayed

*) better gnatsd exception handling, no longer leaves stale locks when
 edits fail.

*) login code substantially rewritten; it's more stable, and it now
 reads user access level from gnatsd

*) two new modes, supporting webserver-based authentication, or
 password-less login.

*) all hardcoded values now set in a block at the top.

*) unused subs and values removed.  it's amazing, the cruft that you
 find when you use strict...

*) numerous small and not so small bugfixes.

let me know what you think.

since the diffs are rather large (92K total), i've put them on my
personal website, rather than dumping them in your mailbox.  the
diffs, clean copies of my modified versions of gnatsweb.pl and
gnatsweb-site-sente.pl, and my ChangeLog additions, are all available
here:

http://otisbean.com/gnats/

2001-04-16  Dirk Bergstrom  <address@hidden>

        * gnatsweb.pl: now runs with "use strict;". while combing though
        the code to properly declare and scope variables, i found several
        flags and routines that were unused; they were removed.  some
        routines were massaged to accomodate lexical scoping:
        - the sortby_field(_num) subs were inlined.
        - can_do_mime is wrapped in a do{} block to capture the cached
value.
        - $default was removed from date_menu.

        * gnatsweb.pl: configuration switches gathered together at the top
        of the file, keeping all the hardcoded global values in one place.
 
        * gnatsweb.pl (popup_or_scrolling_menu): category
        dropdown/scrolling list now includes descriptions.  the
        descriptions from the categories file are now displayed, instead
        of just the (sometimes cryptic) codes.
 
        * gnatsweb.pl: uses warn() to write errors to the server logfile
        whenever an error is generated, a message is emitted to STDERR,
        containing a diagnostic message, the username, the database, and a
        stacktrace.
 
        * gnatsweb.pl (send_pr, edit): the create and edit PR pages now
        keep track of field number, so that javascript hooks can be
        applied.  forms are also named.  gnats field names customarily
        include dashes, and javascript names cannot include dashes, so it
        was impossible to write a javascript routine that could examine or
        change a field value.  to get around this, the code keeps track of
        the field number (starting at zero), and passes this value to the
        cb() callback.  this way, the callback can generate javascript on
        the fly, for things like client-side validitity checking.
 
        * gnatsweb.pl (send_pr, edit): field descriptions are printed in
        the create and edit pages (and optionally on the view PR page,
        though that tends to look overly cluttered), using the field
        descriptions from the dbconfig file.  this necessitated setting
        the column width of the left column to 20%, so that the
        descriptions would wrap.

        * gnatsweb.pl (view): tidied up logic for
           [edit] or [view audit-trail] or send email to interested parties
        so that the last 'or' doesn't show up when users w/o edit access
        are viewing the audit trail.
        
        * gnatsweb.pl (page_start_html): database name now displayed in
        header.
 
        * gnatsweb.pl (mark_urls): replaced with a more rigorous
        version. now does email addresses, and turns references to PRs
        into view_pr_urls.  this is used on just about every field in
        the view-pr page, and on many fields in the query-results
        page.
 
        * gnatsweb.pl (client_exit): improved handling of errors and
        exceptions from gnatsd.  $suppress_client_exit is now actually
        honored, so that submitedit() and initialize() can recover
        gracefully from problems.  this is particularly important in
        submitedit() -- if we shut down the connection to gnatsd on an
        edit error, the lock on the PR will not be properly cleared.  this
        fixes a problem with stale PR lockfiles.
  
        * gnatsweb.pl (submitquery): dates are returned from queries as
        ISO-8601-like dates (yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss tz), using the query
        format %{%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z}D.  This makes sorting query results
        by date actually work.
  
        * gnatsweb.pl (submitquery): empty parameters are stripped from
        the query-string on the query-results page.  in a gnats db with
        many fields, the query-string will become very long, filled up
        with ...&field_name=&other_field=&third_field=&....  this is a
        problem, since IE5 truncates query-strings at ~2048 characters.

        * gnatsweb.pl (advanced_query_page): applied yngve's fix of v2.33
        to the advanced query page.
        
        * gnatsweb.pl: added explicit return statements to several subs
        for readability.
 
        * gnatsweb.pl (param2field): now looks thru @fieldnames for a
        matching field.  the old, algorithmic, behavior would fail on
        fields with multiple consecutive capitalized letters (ie: ID-Num
        would come back as Id-Num) and fields containing underscores
        (ie: Project_Number would come back as Project-Number).  if there
        is no matching gnats fieldname, it falls back to the old behavior.
 
        * gnatsweb.pl ($sn): global variable $sn renamed $script_name for
        clarity.
 
        * gnatsweb.pl: Responsible field always displayed as a mailto:
        link
 
        * gnatsweb.pl (send_html): removed the die() on file open failure.
        it seemed better to simply return, and let the caller decide what
        to do, especially since help_page already had error handling coded
        in...
 
        * gnatsweb.pl (can_edit, can_create): now use the access levels
        defined in gnatsd.h
 
        * gnatsweb.pl: added $no_create_without_access flag.  useful
        primarily for web-only sites which wish to limit PR creation to
        users with a minimum access level.  allows for view-without-create
        access.
 
        * gnatsweb.pl: gnatsd/gnatsweb can be set up for web-only access.
        if you want to set up a more tightly secured installation, you can
        allow only localhost connections to gnatsd, restrict logins to the
        host, and require all users to go thru gnatsweb.  this option
        assumes that the web server is doing authentication, and that the
        REMOTE_USER environment variable is correctly set.  with this
        switch set, the "login again" button is replaced by a "change
        database" button.

        * gnatsweb.pl (change_database): added to support web-only access
 
        * gnatsweb.pl: gnatsweb can be set up to ignore the gnats
        password.  the gnats network mode is quite cavalier about
        passwords, and some sites may elect not to use gnats passwords.
        if so, there's no point in gnatsweb asking for them.  if this
        switch is set, the "login again" page does not prompt for a
        password.
 
        * gnatsweb.pl (parse_config): removed this sub, since it is
        unused, and the %config hash is unused.  i have no clue why it's
        here -- it may be a relic from gnats 3.113, which, iirc, has a
        "config" file...
 
        * gnatsweb.pl ($site_mailer): removed, as it was unused
 
        * gnatsweb.pl (submitedit): removed $ok flag, since it was
        superfluous.  the "last LOCKED;" statements in the error handling
        blocks serve the same purpose
 
        * gnatsweb.pl (%db_pref): changed db_pref hash element 'email' to
        'email_addr'.  otherwise, whatever value user entered into the
        "Reporter's Email" field on the "Create PR" page would get stuck
        as their email address (because set_pref overrides %cvals{'foo'}
        with $q->param('foo')...)
 
        * gnatsweb.pl (initialize): substantially rewritten.  the old
        version issued a CHDB first, then attempted to set the user name
        (and thus get access) with USER.  this could lead to a deadlock
        situation where the user was "in" a database they didn't have
        access to, and thus login_page() couldn't display a list of
        databases so the user could change to one they *did* have access
        to.  access level defaulted to 'edit'.  the new version starts off
        by caching the results of DBLS, so that any failures down the line
        won't leave us in a deadlock.  then it does a CHDB, using the
        three-argument form (db-name, user-name, password), which will
        fail if the user does not have access to the selected database.
        from the response to the CHDB command, it extracts the
        access-level the user is granted in that database, and sets the
        global $access_level variable
        (access_level defaults to view, instead of edit).  finally, if the
        access_level is less than view (ie, submit, none or deny), the
        user is given the login page.
 
        * gnatsweb.pl (main, cmd_login): moved login code from command
        switch in main() to it's own sub.  this makes main() much cleaner.
        since i added a bunch of code to the login, it seemed best to move
        it to it's own sub.  cmd_login() also does some sanity-checking on
        the user name -- i discovered that users were entering PR numbers
        in the login field, because they were so used to just typing away
        in the first field they saw...
 
        * gnatsweb.pl (login_page): now displays an optional message,
        given as second parameter, useful for passing authentication
        errors to the user. only displays the necessary fields, depending
        on $site_gnats_browser_auth and $site_no_gnats_passwords.
 
        * gnatsweb.pl: debug flags allow for browser viewing of
        communications with gnatsd.  if the $site_allow_remote_debug flag
        is set, setting the 'debug' param will allow you to see the
        conversation between gnatsweb and gnatsd.  setting it to 'cmd'
        will show just gnatsweb's commands, 'reply' will show just
        gnatsd's replies, and 'all' will show both.  this is useful mostly
        for developers and gnats admins.  unfortunately, there's no good
        way to limit use of debug params to users with admin privileges,
        since much of what you might want to snoop happens *before* access
        level is determined.
 
        * gnatsweb.pl (hidden_debug): added to forms to preserve state of
        debug params.  this allows debugging during queries and
        create/edit submits.
 
        * gnatsweb.pl (main_page): now exit()s when finished.  so that we
        can call it from the big switch in main() when users try to do
        something they aren't allowed to do.
 
        * gnatsweb.pl (main): if access level is less than 'edit', users
        cannot submit edits to PRs.  previously, users w/o edit privileges
        did not see the "edit" button on the main page, but gnatsweb did
        not explicitly prevent them from submitting an edit
        (ie, with a manually created form).  this loophole is now closed.

        * gnatsweb.pl (main): $gnatsweb_site_file is read and eval'd,
        rather than pulled in using do(), to facilitate using strict
        (using do(), the included file is not in the including file's
        lexical scope).  errors generate a warn()ing to the server log as
        well as a die (which will go to the browser, via
        CGI::Carp::FatalsToBrowser).
        
        * gnatsweb-site-sente.pl: configuration switches from gnatsweb.pl
        duplicated at the top of the file, since this is the recommended
        place for them...

        * gnatsweb-site-sente.pl (site_callback): cleaned up the if
        blocks, removed unsupported callbacks.  added documentation for
        the suported callbacks.


--
Dirk Bergstrom               address@hidden
_____________________________________________
Juniper Networks Inc.,   Engineering Web Guru
Tel: 408.745.3182           Fax: 408.745.8095