3 ms·

>its target audience are OpenBSD developers I'm a huge fan of OpenBSD and all of their efforts but the single point that makes me most in awe of them is the ef

>its target audience are OpenBSD developers I'm a huge fan of OpenBSD and all of their efforts but the single point that makes me most in awe of them is the effort and willingness to dogfood. That is the heart and soul and the essence of what makes FOSS powerful. Make what you want to use. While some may argue about re-inventing the wheel, the OpenBSD team has time after time shown that their implementation of $thing is better then the original it intends to replace. Please continue fighting the good fight, I appreciate it.

enneff 7y ago
Shows the value of having consistent goals and values in software development. Their focus on simplicity and clarity is inspiring.
hsaliak 7y ago
The article states that Got will use unveil and pledge [1] to harden to codebase. This is not supported in linux, so it's unlikely that ports with similar guarantees will be straightforward. It will not replace git in general. [1] https://www.openbsd.org/papers/BeckPledgeUnveilBSDCan2018.pdf https://www.openbsd.org/papers/BeckPledgeUnveilBSDCan2018.pd...
- tom_mellior 7y ago
  Newbie question: For porting to Linux, can't you just remove (#ifdef out, or something) the pledge and unveil calls? You would no longer get the guarantees, but aren't these similar to assertions in that once you have a well-tested program you can have some certainty that you wouldn't violate the pledges?
  - hsaliak 7y ago
    The goal of something like pledge/unveil is to harden a carefully written program from being exploited, so it has a role to play at runtime. Asserts are used for program invariants, so checking them at runtime is less important. So the big problem with ifdefing them out is that you no longer get these guarantees. Linux has seccomp that is similar in functionality, so the guarantees can be ported over - it's just going to take effort.
    - wahern 7y ago
      seccomp doesn't support file paths, while pledge and unveil do. That makes a huge difference.
mruts 7y ago
I love the OpenBSD philosophy of simplicity and correctness. Plus the devs are one of the few people who actually treat incomplete or incorrect documentation as a bug. The OS is one of the easiest to set up, use, and modify. I ran OpenBSD for a long-time on my desktop and it always was a joy to use. I eventually switched back to Arch Linux due to lack of software support and subpar performance. Going back was really painful, Linux, to put it bluntly, is a hot mess. Documentation is terrible, systemd is annoying, and the gnu userland is bloated. It’s often unclear what the kernel supports and does not support. With OpenBSD it is very clear, every driver has a man page and you don’t have to guess what hardware the OS supports.
- znpy 7y ago
  > I eventually switched back to Arch Linux due to lack of software support and subpar performance. > Going back was really painful, Linux, to put it bluntly, is a hot mess. You basically answered yourself. This is the trade-off: quality vs quantity. This is not a flame-starter, its an observation of mere facts.

enneff 7y ago

Shows the value of having consistent goals and values in software development. Their focus on simplicity and clarity is inspiring.

hsaliak 7y ago

The article states that Got will use unveil and pledge [1] to harden to codebase. This is not supported in linux, so it's unlikely that ports with similar guarantees will be straightforward. It will not replace git in general. [1] https://www.openbsd.org/papers/BeckPledgeUnveilBSDCan2018.pdf https://www.openbsd.org/papers/BeckPledgeUnveilBSDCan2018.pd...

tom_mellior 7y ago
Newbie question: For porting to Linux, can't you just remove (#ifdef out, or something) the pledge and unveil calls? You would no longer get the guarantees, but aren't these similar to assertions in that once you have a well-tested program you can have some certainty that you wouldn't violate the pledges?
- hsaliak 7y ago
  The goal of something like pledge/unveil is to harden a carefully written program from being exploited, so it has a role to play at runtime. Asserts are used for program invariants, so checking them at runtime is less important. So the big problem with ifdefing them out is that you no longer get these guarantees. Linux has seccomp that is similar in functionality, so the guarantees can be ported over - it's just going to take effort.
  - wahern 7y ago
    seccomp doesn't support file paths, while pledge and unveil do. That makes a huge difference.

mruts 7y ago

I love the OpenBSD philosophy of simplicity and correctness. Plus the devs are one of the few people who actually treat incomplete or incorrect documentation as a bug. The OS is one of the easiest to set up, use, and modify. I ran OpenBSD for a long-time on my desktop and it always was a joy to use. I eventually switched back to Arch Linux due to lack of software support and subpar performance. Going back was really painful, Linux, to put it bluntly, is a hot mess. Documentation is terrible, systemd is annoying, and the gnu userland is bloated. It’s often unclear what the kernel supports and does not support. With OpenBSD it is very clear, every driver has a man page and you don’t have to guess what hardware the OS supports.

znpy 7y ago
> I eventually switched back to Arch Linux due to lack of software support and subpar performance. > Going back was really painful, Linux, to put it bluntly, is a hot mess. You basically answered yourself. This is the trade-off: quality vs quantity. This is not a flame-starter, its an observation of mere facts.