Re: [gentoo-dev] Reviving the Sandbox project

[Michał Górny]

W dniu pią, 22.09.2017 o godzinie 00∶07 +0300, użytkownik Mart Raudsepp
napisał:
> Ühel kenal päeval, N, 21.09.2017 kell 22:54, kirjutas Michał Górny:
> > W dniu czw, 21.09.2017 o godzinie 23∶33 +0300, użytkownik Mart
> > Raudsepp
> > napisał:
> > > Ühel kenal päeval, N, 21.09.2017 kell 21:56, kirjutas Michał Górny:
> > > > Hi, everyone.
> > > >
> > > > TL;DR: I'm looking for new people to resume work on sandbox, and
> > > > I
> > > > will
> > > > most likely branch it at v2.10 and start keep-alive work on top
> > > > of
> > > > that.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > The state of our sandbox is not very well. Gentoo is currently
> > > > using
> > > > the old v2.10 with local patches. v2.11 is p.masked for a long
> > > > time
> > > > because of multiple unsolved bugs. The git repository also
> > > > includes
> > > > v2.12 tag that has not even been packaged for Gentoo. From what
> > > > I've
> > > > been able to establish, the bugs causing v2.11 mask are still
> > > > present
> > > > in git head.
> > > >
> > > > To add to this, the only person maintaining the code (vapier) has
> > > > not
> > > > touched it since March, and AFAIA he's not responding to any
> > > > contact
> > > > attempts from within Gentoo. Given this and the importance of
> > > > sandbox
> > > > to
> > > > Gentoo at the moment, I think it's reasonable to presume he's MIA
> > > > and start looking for volunteers to join the effort.
> > > >
> > > > I have already added myself to the project page [1] and I'm going
> > > > to
> > > > try
> > > > to put some effort into improving the state of things. However,
> > > > I'm
> > > > not
> > > > really an expert in the high magic used in sandbox. If anyone is
> > > > interested in helping out, feel free to add yourself as well.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > The above considered, I don't think I'm really going to be able
> > > > to
> > > > solve
> > > > the problems introduced by v2.11. If nobody has a better idea,
> > > > I'm
> > > > going
> > > > to branch sandbox at v2.10 and look into backporting whatever's
> > > > feasible
> > > > and resuming development in hotfix mode on top of that.
> > >
> > > Do you have a handy list of problems with v2.11?
> > > Perhaps all is well for Gentoo usages after the more ptrace-happy
> > > fallbacking commit (apparently was needed by ChromeOS) is reverted
> > > if
> > > ptrace-path problems don't get fixes?
> > >
> >
> > There are two bugs listed in p.mask reason. There's a lot of bugs on
> > Bugzilla but I don't know which versions they affect.
>
>
> #580726 comes from the ptrace thing I mentioned. I identified the
> commit that makes it fallback to ptrace for firefox case, while it
> seemed to work fine before without fallback, and then there are issues
> in that ptrace codepath that might have always been there, but they
> just didn't get hit due to ptrace fallback being much rarer before
> this. I believe the commit hash is mentioned on the bug.
>
> #578582 seems to be just patrick being special and refusing to provide
> any information about the bug that no-one else hits.
>
> Maybe if we revert that more easy ptrace fallback stuff for now, the
> rest in sandbox git master is fine (if my opendir fix gets applied
> that's only patched in via ebuild right now)?
>

Maybe it is. However, I don't feel confident releasing a completely new
version myself, and I won't be able to review the changes thouroughly
enough to become confident.

Given that sandbox is utterly broken by design, I don't really want to
put too much effort in trying to make it a little better. I'd rather put
the minimal effort required to make it not-much-worse.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny