draft release notes for 0.9.15

draft release notes for 0.9.15

[Rich Felker]

See draft below. Comments welcome, especially on what's the most
important to go in the short release blurb since there's so much..

Rich



DRAFT 0.9.15 release notes

new features:
- support for mixing IPv4 and v6 nameserver addresses in resolv.conf
- RFC 3678 multicast structures/macros in netinet/in.h
- putspent and fgetspent functions (shadow password API)
- timef function (obsolete, removed in POSIX 2008)
- semtimedop syscall (Linux-specific sysvipc extension)
- drem and finite functions (obsolete BSD functions)
- getloadavg function (non-standard)
- libc.so now stores and prints its version information
- expose constants for new Linux features including O_TMPFILE

bugs fixed:
- buffer overflow in mbsrtowcs
- clobbering of gr_name in getgrnam_r and getgrgid_r
- execle ignoring the environment argument
- setenv crash on malloc failure
- failure of malloc to set errno when failing to extend heap
- incorrect errno value from getcwd with zero size
- spurious failure in faccessat with AT_EACCESS flag with suid/sgid programs
- several fd leaks due to missing close-on-exec flag
- misspellings/typos in macro names in several headers
- incorrect failure return value in inet_pton
- various numeric ip address parsing and validation fixes
- namespace conformance issues in several headers
- minor header issues
- zombie processes left by faccessat with AT_EACCESS
- timezone file parser failing/crashing on 64-bit archs
- timezone path search was only trying first path
- incorrect handling of excessive-length TZ environment strings
- timezone file loading was wrongly enforcing O_NOFOLLOW/rejecting symlinks
- iswspace was wrongly returning true for the null character
- various bugs in wordexp
- putgrent could write corrupt lines after write failures
- dn_expand misinterpreted in-packet offsets greater than 255
- spurious strftime/wcsftime failure on len+1==bufsize case
- incorrect underflow flag in fma corner cases
- log*(0) wrongly returned +inf in downward-rounding mode

i386-specific bugs fixed:
- failure of fesetround to set sse rounding mode
- floating point limit constants interpreted wrong due to excess precision

powerpc-specific bugs fixed:
- broken thread pointer access when compiled with clang

strict conformance issues:
- NULL definition re-aligned with POSIX (requires (void *) cast)
- alignment of math.h is* comparison functions with C11 annex F requirements

Re: draft release notes for 0.9.15

[Szabolcs Nagy]

* Rich Felker <dalias@aerifal.cx> [2013-12-03 20:33:20 -0500]:
> See draft below. Comments welcome, especially on what's the most
> important to go in the short release blurb since there's so much..

my list would be:

new features:
v4 and v6 nameserver in resolv.conf
multicast structures in netinet/in.h
shadow password api
libc.so can print musl version info

bug fixes:
mbsrtowcs buffer overflow
group file handling
execle environ passing
setenv crash
timezone
ip address parsing
faccessat
fnmatch
fd leaks

> DRAFT 0.9.15 release notes
> 
> new features:
> - support for mixing IPv4 and v6 nameserver addresses in resolv.conf
> - RFC 3678 multicast structures/macros in netinet/in.h
> - putspent and fgetspent functions (shadow password API)
> - timef function (obsolete, removed in POSIX 2008)
> - semtimedop syscall (Linux-specific sysvipc extension)
> - drem and finite functions (obsolete BSD functions)
> - getloadavg function (non-standard)
> - libc.so now stores and prints its version information
> - expose constants for new Linux features including O_TMPFILE
> 
> bugs fixed:

- fnmatch out-of-bounds access and spurious failures with FNM_PATHNAME and escaped / pattern

> - buffer overflow in mbsrtowcs
> - clobbering of gr_name in getgrnam_r and getgrgid_r
> - execle ignoring the environment argument
> - setenv crash on malloc failure
> - failure of malloc to set errno when failing to extend heap
> - incorrect errno value from getcwd with zero size
> - spurious failure in faccessat with AT_EACCESS flag with suid/sgid programs
> - several fd leaks due to missing close-on-exec flag
> - misspellings/typos in macro names in several headers
> - incorrect failure return value in inet_pton
> - various numeric ip address parsing and validation fixes
> - namespace conformance issues in several headers
> - minor header issues
> - zombie processes left by faccessat with AT_EACCESS
> - timezone file parser failing/crashing on 64-bit archs
> - timezone path search was only trying first path
> - incorrect handling of excessive-length TZ environment strings
> - timezone file loading was wrongly enforcing O_NOFOLLOW/rejecting symlinks
> - iswspace was wrongly returning true for the null character
> - various bugs in wordexp
> - putgrent could write corrupt lines after write failures
> - dn_expand misinterpreted in-packet offsets greater than 255
> - spurious strftime/wcsftime failure on len+1==bufsize case
> - incorrect underflow flag in fma corner cases
> - log*(0) wrongly returned +inf in downward-rounding mode
> 
> i386-specific bugs fixed:
> - failure of fesetround to set sse rounding mode
> - floating point limit constants interpreted wrong due to excess precision
> 
> powerpc-specific bugs fixed:
> - broken thread pointer access when compiled with clang
> 
> strict conformance issues:
> - NULL definition re-aligned with POSIX (requires (void *) cast)
> - alignment of math.h is* comparison functions with C11 annex F requirements

Re: draft release notes for 0.9.15

[Rich Felker]

On Wed, Dec 04, 2013 at 03:42:06AM +0100, Szabolcs Nagy wrote:
> * Rich Felker <dalias@aerifal.cx> [2013-12-03 20:33:20 -0500]:
> > See draft below. Comments welcome, especially on what's the most
> > important to go in the short release blurb since there's so much..
> 
> my list would be:
> 
> new features:
> v4 and v6 nameserver in resolv.conf
> multicast structures in netinet/in.h
> shadow password api
> libc.so can print musl version info
> 
> bug fixes:
> mbsrtowcs buffer overflow
> group file handling
> execle environ passing
> setenv crash
> timezone
> ip address parsing
> faccessat
> fnmatch
> fd leaks

That's a big list. Of these, I think setenv is probably not worth
mentioning. It's rare (and probably buggy) to be calling setenv many
times; most sane usage just calls it a finite number of times at
startup, where memory exhaustion is really unlikely.

Based on this, here's a proposed draft blurb:

    Major bug fixes include a buffer overflow in mbsrtowcs, various
    group file handling errors, failure of execle to pass on the new
    environment, and timezone-parsing crashes on 64-bit systems. Also
    fixed are several file descriptor leak (close-on-exec) issues,
    handling of invalid IP address strings, several fnmatch corner
    cases possibly leading to out-of-bound access, and failure of
    faccessat with the AT_EACCESS flag. This release also adds support
    for mixing IPv4 and v6 nameservers in resolv.conf, expanded shadow
    password API, IPv6 multicast structures, and the ability for
    libc.so to report the version installed.

That might still need to be trimmed down a bit to freecode's (formerly
freshmeat) release blurb limit but it works for all our other uses.

Rich