From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Anders Kaseorg <andersk@mit.edu>
Cc: Daniel Gustafsson <daniel@yesql.se>
Cc: Kyotaro Horiguchi <horikyota.ntt@gmail.com>
Cc: alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org
Cc: pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Prefer getenv("HOME") to find the UNIX home directory
Date: Sun, 09 Jan 2022 16:04:07 -0500
Message-ID: <1796239.1641762247@sss.pgh.pa.us> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <fafa1aed-42f5-fecb-324c-06f5d5301f11@mit.edu>
References: <202110182223.zeze33l55qa5@alvherre.pgsql>
<20211019.173422.706584612464055211.horikyota.ntt@gmail.com>
<5d675cbe-7837-e9ae-961d-be7d03201f3b@mit.edu>
<20211020.144014.580443822870543857.horikyota.ntt@gmail.com>
<07CA67A0-A46C-4ED5-99C6-24D41BDDC8CA@yesql.se>
<d452fd57-8c34-0a94-79c1-4498eb4ffbdc@mit.edu>
<1769427.1641754742@sss.pgh.pa.us>
<fafa1aed-42f5-fecb-324c-06f5d5301f11@mit.edu>
Anders Kaseorg <andersk@mit.edu> writes:
> On 1/9/22 10:59, Tom Lane wrote:
>> Given the POSIX requirements, it's basically impossible to believe
>> that there are interesting cases where $HOME isn't set. Thus, it
>> seems to me that keeping the getpwuid calls will just mean carrying
>> untestable dead code, so we should simplify matters by ripping
>> those out and *only* consulting $HOME.
> While POSIX requires that the login program put you in a conforming
> environment, nothing stops the user from building a non-conforming
> environment, such as with ‘env -i’. One could argue that such a user
> deserves whatever broken behavior they might get. But to me it seems
> prudent to continue working there if it worked before.
The only case that the v1 patch helps such a user for is if they
unset HOME or set it precisely to ''. If they set it to anything
else, it's still broken from their perspective. So I do not find
that that argument holds water.
Moreover, ISTM that the only plausible use-case for unsetting HOME
is to prevent programs from finding stuff in your home directory.
What would be the point otherwise? So it's pretty hard to envision
a case where somebody is actually using, and happy with, the
behavior you argue we ought to keep.
>> The v1 patch also neglects the matter of documentation.
> The reason I didn’t change the documentation is that this is already
> what “~” is supposed to mean according to POSIX and common
> implementations.
The point here is precisely that we're changing what *we* think ~
means. I don't think we can just leave the docs unchanged.
regards, tom lane
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Reply to all the recipients using the --to and --cc options:
reply via email
To: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Cc: tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us, andersk@mit.edu, daniel@yesql.se, horikyota.ntt@gmail.com, alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org, pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Prefer getenv("HOME") to find the UNIX home directory
In-Reply-To: <1796239.1641762247@sss.pgh.pa.us>
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
This inbox is served by DDX for PostgreSQL; see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox