From: michal.svoboda@agents.felk.cvut.cz (Michal Svoboda)
Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2010 21:22:44 +0100
Subject: [refpolicy] Possible regression and bug in
 userdom_base_user_template
In-Reply-To: <4B8D1E87.50001@redhat.com>
References: <20100301102220.GF3990@myhost.felk.cvut.cz>
	<1267450925.30557.7.camel@gorn.columbia.tresys.com>
	<20100301150133.GG3990@myhost.felk.cvut.cz>
	<1267457544.30557.30.camel@gorn.columbia.tresys.com>
	<20100301170324.GI3990@myhost.felk.cvut.cz>
	<20100301174828.pdj3qn7guaswg8g8@legacy.mxes.net>
	<20100301201425.GJ3990@myhost.felk.cvut.cz>
	<1267539196.30557.71.camel@gorn.columbia.tresys.com>
	<4B8D1E87.50001@redhat.com>
Message-ID: <20100303202244.GL3990@myhost.felk.cvut.cz>
To: refpolicy@oss.tresys.com
List-Id: refpolicy.oss.tresys.com

Martin Orr wrote:
> Yes, this is a Debian only patch.  According to my history, it was
> added somewhere between 0.0.20080702-1 and 0.0.20080702-4.

Daniel J Walsh wrote:
> That is also how innovation happens. 

I obviously don't want to obstruct the way to innovation, but try to see
the situation through my eyes.

I want to develop my custom modules on top of refpolicy. To do that I
use the publicly available interface reference on tresys website. I take
it as the contract for the macros I use, like userdom_base_user_domain.

On fedora/debian/... the macro behaves differently without any sign of
delta documentation and/or tresys-like interface reference. (Actually
the discussed change is deeper than that, potentially breaking also
other interfaces.) To me such a change is as if you (silently or not)
changed the contract for the fopen() C function and obviously many
developers would be unhappy if that function would behave differently on
different distros.

Why didn't you simply create your own macro (or module) that extends the
original functionality and use that for where you think it should be
used (say user_u) and leave the original interface untouched?

Regards,
Michal Svoboda

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