[Pkg-zsh-devel] Bug#418199: Fwd: Re: segfault with exceedingly long path [origin: schaefer at brasslantern.com]

[Frank Terbeck]

Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 18, 2014 at 10:19:39AM +0100, Axel Beckert wrote:
[...]
>> upstream said, this is an issue which is "unlikely ever to be fixed".
>> Marking as such.
[...]
> From: Bart Schaefer <schaefer at brasslantern.com>:
>> [...]  Various parts
>> of the shell rely on system limits such as PATH_MAX which cannot be
>> dynamically changed.  There's a comment with some explanation around
>> lines 109-137 of Src/compat.c.
[...]
> Could you fix that in Debian even if upstream doesn't care? A segfault

Fixing it in debian and not upstream is very unlikely. It is not like
upstream doesn't care. It's much more that the underlying problem is
quite hard to fix correctly in the current code. If we had a proper fix,
they would take it faster than you can say "ouch, that was a segfault.".

> is never right. If zsh can't handle the long path then it must check

Yes, they are never right. Bart Schaefer from upstream (who said that is
unlikely to be fixed) knows that as well. He also send a patch that
should stop the shell from segfaulting in this particular case:

  http://www.zsh.org/mla/workers/2014/msg00085.html

But this is currently more like plucking holes than fixing the
underlying problem; i.e. the reliance on static system limits like
PATH_MAX.

> the length and give an error. Not fixing a segfault is imho
> unacceptable.

As always, send patches.

Regards, Frank