Re: OpenSSL breaks factor(6)

On Sun, Dec 29, 2019 at 05:14:28PM -0500, Garance A Drosehn wrote:
> On 29 Dec 2019, at 2:17, Steve Kargl wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, Dec 29, 2019 at 01:34:28AM -0500, Garance A Drosehn wrote:
> >>>
> >>> An interested user will need to add that support.  AFAIK, factor(6)
> >>> has never recognized the 0x prefix, and I'm not trying to add new
> >>> features.  I'm simply fixing factor(6) to match its documentation,
> >>> and trying to ensure WITH_OPENSSL and WITHOUT_OPENSSL give the
> >>> same results where applicable.
> >>
> >> Well, I'd be willing to do the work to add the new feature, and also
> >> make the commit.  It'd be a nice easy task for me to tackle...  :)
> >>
> >> But I think documenting that "hex works, but only for hex values
> >> which have at least one A-F in the value" is not something that I'd
> >> want to draw attention to via documentation.
> >>
> >
> > You have a 17 year history to worry about as hexadecimal support
> > was added by "r104720 | fanf | 2002-10-09".  Compiling factor(6)
> > with and without OpenSSL support after 2002-10-09 gives a utility
> > with different inconsistent behavior.
> 
> If I understand you right, that behavior has not been documented
> for 17 years.  If it continues to be un-documented, that cannot
> possibly break any scripts.  I'm  not saying we should remove the
> behavior, I'm just saying we don't need to document it.  Especially
> not if we add support for a better way to specify hex values.

See the most recent patch.  It does everything you want with
'0x' or '0X', maintains what was likely the intended behavior,
and makes the with/without OpenSSL support consistent.

I disagree with not documenting what the utility does.  Currently,
the string '1abc' returns '1' with OpenSSL and 6844 without OpenSSL.
It is not possible to understand this behavior based on the manpage.

> 
> On 29 Dec 2019, at 1:50, Steve Kargl wrote:
> >
> >    Do what you want with the patch (including ignoring it).
> >    Hopefully, someone in the FreeBSD project will now
> >    recognize that factor(6) with and without OpenSSL gives
> >    inconsistent results, and neither matches factor(6)'s
> >    manpage.
> 
> Oh.  I tend to lose track with who is and isn't a src-committer on
> FreeBSD.  I've seen your name enough that I assumed you were one.
> If you're not, I can handle committing these changes, including the
> new feature.  That'll keep my commit bit alive for another year!
> 

I gave up my commit bit years ago, because the individuals who
set up jenkins reduced freebsd-current_at_ to a spam repository
for jenkins build logs and refused to stop spamming the list. 
freebsd-current_at_ has yet to recover from that era.  I still have
my kargl_at_freebsd.org address.

I do, however, still use FreeBSD.  When I find a problem and
can fix it, I submit patches to the relevant mailing list and/or
bugzilla.


-- 
Steve