git/contrib
brian m. carlson 05cd988dce wrapper: add a helper to generate numbers from a CSPRNG
There are many situations in which having access to a cryptographically
secure pseudorandom number generator (CSPRNG) is helpful.  In the
future, we'll encounter one of these when dealing with temporary files.
To make this possible, let's add a function which reads from a system
CSPRNG and returns some bytes.

We know that all systems will have such an interface.  A CSPRNG is
required for a secure TLS or SSH implementation and a Git implementation
which provided neither would be of little practical use.  In addition,
POSIX is set to standardize getentropy(2) in the next version, so in the
(potentially distant) future we can rely on that.

For systems which lack one of the other interfaces, we provide the
ability to use OpenSSL's CSPRNG.  OpenSSL is highly portable and
functions on practically every known OS, and we know it will have access
to some source of cryptographically secure randomness.  We also provide
support for the arc4random in libbsd for folks who would prefer to use
that.

Because this is a security sensitive interface, we take some
precautions.  We either succeed by filling the buffer completely as we
requested, or we fail.  We don't return partial data because the caller
will almost never find that to be a useful behavior.

Specify a makefile knob which users can use to specify one or more
suitable CSPRNGs, and turn the multiple string options into a set of
defines, since we cannot match on strings in the preprocessor.  We allow
multiple options to make the job of handling this in autoconf easier.

The order of options is important here.  On systems with arc4random,
which is most of the BSDs, we use that, since, except on MirBSD and
macOS, it uses ChaCha20, which is extremely fast, and sits entirely in
userspace, avoiding a system call.  We then prefer getrandom over
getentropy, because the former has been available longer on Linux, and
then OpenSSL. Finally, if none of those are available, we use
/dev/urandom, because most Unix-like operating systems provide that API.
We prefer options that don't involve device files when possible because
those work in some restricted environments where device files may not be
available.

Set the configuration variables appropriately for Linux and the BSDs,
including macOS, as well as Windows and NonStop.  We specifically only
consider versions which receive publicly available security support
here.  For the same reason, we don't specify getrandom(2) on Linux,
because CentOS 7 doesn't support it in glibc (although its kernel does)
and we don't want to resort to making syscalls.

Finally, add a test helper to allow this to be tested by hand and in
tests.  We don't add any tests, since invoking the CSPRNG is not likely
to produce interesting, reproducible results.

Signed-off-by: brian m. carlson <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
2022-01-17 14:17:48 -08:00
..
buildsystems wrapper: add a helper to generate numbers from a CSPRNG 2022-01-17 14:17:48 -08:00
coccinelle index-pack: use xopen in init_thread 2021-09-10 14:22:50 -07:00
completion Merge branch 'en/zdiff3' 2021-12-15 09:39:47 -08:00
contacts git-contacts: also recognise "Reported-by:" 2017-07-27 09:42:55 -07:00
credential *.[ch] *_INIT macros: use { 0 } for a "zero out" idiom 2021-09-27 14:47:59 -07:00
diff-highlight diff-highlight: correctly match blank lines for flush 2020-09-21 22:33:28 -07:00
emacs git{,-blame}.el: remove old bitrotting Emacs code 2018-04-16 17:25:49 +09:00
examples Merge branch 'bw/c-plus-plus' into ds/lazy-load-trees 2018-04-11 10:46:32 +09:00
fast-import import-tars: ignore the global PAX header 2020-03-24 14:39:47 -07:00
git-jump git-jump: pass "merge" arguments to ls-files 2021-11-09 11:15:21 -08:00
git-shell-commands
hg-to-git hg-to-git: make it compatible with both python3 and python2 2019-09-18 12:03:05 -07:00
hooks multimail: stop shipping a copy 2021-06-11 13:35:19 +09:00
long-running-filter docs: warn about possible '=' in clean/smudge filter process values 2016-12-06 11:29:52 -08:00
mw-to-git t6000-t9999: detect and signal failure within loop 2021-12-13 10:29:48 -08:00
persistent-https docs/config: mention protocol implications of url.insteadOf 2017-06-01 10:07:10 +09:00
remote-helpers contrib: git-remote-{bzr,hg} placeholders don't need Python 2017-03-03 11:09:34 -08:00
scalar scalar: implement the version command 2021-12-04 21:52:24 -08:00
stats contrib: update stats/mailmap script 2012-12-12 11:09:11 -08:00
subtree tests: fix broken &&-chains in $(...) command substitutions 2021-12-13 10:29:48 -08:00
thunderbird-patch-inline contrib/thunderbird-patch-inline/appp.sh: use the $( ... ) construct for command substitution 2015-12-27 15:33:13 -08:00
update-unicode unicode_width.h: rename to use dash in file name 2018-04-11 18:11:00 +09:00
vscode vscode: let cSpell work on commit messages, too 2018-07-30 13:14:39 -07:00
workdir git-new-workdir: mark script as LF-only 2017-05-10 13:32:50 +09:00
coverage-diff.sh contrib: add coverage-diff script 2018-10-10 10:11:35 +09:00
git-resurrect.sh contrib/git-resurrect.sh: use hash-agnostic OID pattern 2020-10-08 11:48:56 -07:00
README
remotes2config.sh
rerere-train.sh Comment important codepaths regarding nuking untracked files/dirs 2021-09-27 13:38:37 -07:00

Contributed Software

Although these pieces are available as part of the official git
source tree, they are in somewhat different status.  The
intention is to keep interesting tools around git here, maybe
even experimental ones, to give users an easier access to them,
and to give tools wider exposure, so that they can be improved
faster.

I am not expecting to touch these myself that much.  As far as
my day-to-day operation is concerned, these subdirectories are
owned by their respective primary authors.  I am willing to help
if users of these components and the contrib/ subtree "owners"
have technical/design issues to resolve, but the initiative to
fix and/or enhance things _must_ be on the side of the subtree
owners.  IOW, I won't be actively looking for bugs and rooms for
enhancements in them as the git maintainer -- I may only do so
just as one of the users when I want to scratch my own itch.  If
you have patches to things in contrib/ area, the patch should be
first sent to the primary author, and then the primary author
should ack and forward it to me (git pull request is nicer).
This is the same way as how I have been treating gitk, and to a
lesser degree various foreign SCM interfaces, so you know the
drill.

I expect that things that start their life in the contrib/ area
to graduate out of contrib/ once they mature, either by becoming
projects on their own, or moving to the toplevel directory.  On
the other hand, I expect I'll be proposing removal of disused
and inactive ones from time to time.

If you have new things to add to this area, please first propose
it on the git mailing list, and after a list discussion proves
there are some general interests (it does not have to be a
list-wide consensus for a tool targeted to a relatively narrow
audience -- for example I do not work with projects whose
upstream is svn, so I have no use for git-svn myself, but it is
of general interest for people who need to interoperate with SVN
repositories in a way git-svn works better than git-svnimport),
submit a patch to create a subdirectory of contrib/ and put your
stuff there.

-jc