Re: [PATCH 2/2] mmap.2: MAP_FIXED updated documentation

From: Kees Cook
Date: Mon Dec 18 2017 - 15:19:37 EST


On Mon, Dec 18, 2017 at 11:12 AM, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)
<mtk.manpages@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hello Kees,
>
> I'm late to the party, and only just caught up with the fuss :-).

No worries!

> On 12/14/2017 12:19 AM, Kees Cook wrote:
>> On Wed, Dec 13, 2017 at 6:40 AM, Cyril Hrubis <chrubis@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> Hi!
>>>> You selected stupid name for a flag. Everyone and their dog agrees
>>>> with that. There's even consensus on better name (and everyone agrees
>>>> it is better than .._SAFE). Of course, we could have debate if it is
>>>> NOREPLACE or NOREMOVE or ... and that would be bikeshed. This was just
>>>> poor naming on your part.
>>>
>>> Well while everybody agrees that the name is so bad that basically
>>> anything else would be better, there does not seem to be consensus on
>>> which one to pick. I do understand that this frustrating and fruitless.
>>
>> Based on the earlier threads where I tried to end the bikeshedding, it
>> seemed like MAP_FIXED_NOREPLACE was the least bad option.
>>
>>> So what do we do now, roll a dice to choose new name?
>>>
>>> Or do we ask BFDL[1] to choose the name?
>>
>> I'd like to hear feedback from Michael Kerrisk, as he's had to deal
>> with these kinds of choices in the past. I'm fine to ask Linus too. I
>> just want to get past the name since the feature is quite valuable.
>>
>> And if Michal doesn't want to touch this patch any more, I'm happy to
>> do the search/replace/resend. :P
>
> Something with the prefix MAP_FIXED_ seems to me obviously desirable,
> both to suggest that the function is similar, and also for easy
> grepping of the source code to look for instances of both.
> MAP_FIXED_SAFE didn't really bother me as a name, but
> MAP_FIXED_NOREPLACE (or MAP_FIXED_NOCLOBBER) seem slightly more
> descriptive of what the flag actually does, so a little better.

Great, thanks!

Andrew, can you s/MAP_FIXED_SAFE/MAP_FIXED_NOREPLACE/g in the series?

-Kees

--
Kees Cook
Pixel Security