Proposal: Optional libsafe add-on?

[Warren Togami]

Jesse Keating wrote:
> On Wednesday 21 January 2004 19:37, Lucas Albers wrote:
> 
>>>Recompile cal with new version (i recompiled from newer cal version) and
>>>problem goes away.
> 
> 
> So if we were to offer libsafe, we'd have to offer an upgraded cal as well.  
> I wonder if any other packages will die....
> 

Not necessarily.   Why?

1) How important is cal to servers?  In all of my experience I didn't 
even know it existed until now... unless is it used in some system 
scripts or something?
2) Those who chose to use libsafe should do so only after reading the 
page describing what it does, and the potential risk.  The web page 
would say very clearly that the server admin should TEST all of their 
software and keep an eye out for strange behavior rather than install 
libsafe and trust that it works.
3) If things that they need stop working, then they have a two options: 
Remove libsafe or patch the broken program.  Perhaps if something more 
important than cal is found to be broken, then it can go into the 
minimal libsafe-specific apt/yum repository.  shadow-utils for RH9 and 
FC1 would fall into this category for example.
4) List everything that is known to be broken by libsafe on the web 
page, and if it is considered a serious enough problem to patch it.