Re: (ITS#8988) Undefined Behavior in slapadd

[hyc@symas.com]

Jeffrey Walton wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 7, 2019 at 9:59 AM Howard Chu <hyc@symas.com> wrote:
>>
>> noloader@gmail.com wrote:
>>> On Fri, Jun 7, 2019 at 9:32 AM Howard Chu <hyc@symas.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> noloader@gmail.com wrote:
>>>> ...
>>>>> I encourage OpenLDAP to fix the undefined behavior. OpenLDAP is an
>>>>> important project, and the undefined behavior is causing too many
>>>>> tangential problems.
>>>>
>>>> Undefined behavior is not a bug, nor is it prohibited by the C spec. It is a necessary
>>>> part of the language for its intended use as a system programming language, writing
>>>> machine-specific programs. Anyone who says it is prohibited by the spec is wrong.
>>>
>>> I don't believe this is correct.
>>>
>>> Maybe you are thinking of implementation defined behavior?
>>
>> That would apply to how a particular compiler implementation treats some piece of code.
>> Whether a CPU supports unaligned access is machine-defined. Since our code is already
>> properly ifdef'd for the machines which do or don't support it, the fact that this is
>> "non-portable" is not an issue.
> 
> The undefined behavior is causing OpenLDAP to fail testing.
> 
> Worse, it is causing test failures in programs and libraries which use
> OpenLDAP. The OpenLDAP bugs have cross-pollinated into other programs
> and libraries. It is not simply contained or limited to OpenLDAP.
> 
> That's a big problem for testing a QA folks.

Then the tests are broken, because these are not bugs.

-- 
  -- Howard Chu
  CTO, Symas Corp.           http://www.symas.com
  Director, Highland Sun     http://highlandsun.com/hyc/
  Chief Architect, OpenLDAP  http://www.openldap.org/project/