the gulf between what should be and what is can be quite large. can you name any software you use which you think is likely to be bug free and/or unlikely to need any updates in the next few years?
but anyway, the discussion was about operating systems
what makes you pick this, of all programs? just because it hasn’t had a release in four years?
Skimming the commit log one can see it certainly has had some bugs, and given that it is written in C it is reasonable to assume it has had some security-relevant ones. (eg, i’m not certain but this commit from a few months prior to the latest release looks like it could be fixing an actually exploitable bug?)
Currently there are 13 commits newer than the latest release. From a quick glance none appear to be obviously fixing security bugs (i guess there will be a new release when they next find some) but there are actually as-yet unreleased commits there fixing bugs… such as this one, made two days after the last release, which fixes searching being left-anchored.
I get it that programs would be big and have bugs. Minix creator said irrespective of language, there have been found typically 1 bug per 1000 LoC. I believe that bug free software is certainly possible. I have my hopes in microkernels with less than 15k LOC, and softwares made by suckless. Updates provide psychological reward that wow, my software is better now but I don’t think such a thing is possible. If for a minimal software like dwm, st, with no unnecessary feature, it could be bug free with zero bugs.
lmao, [citation needed] - what in the desktop OS space is sufficiently minimal to be “completely bug free”?
OS and software are 2 different words my friend. But I think it should be possible to make a minimal software bug free.
the gulf between what should be and what is can be quite large. can you name any software you use which you think is likely to be bug free and/or unlikely to need any updates in the next few years?
but anyway, the discussion was about operating systems
GPA. GNU Privacy assistant.
what makes you pick this, of all programs? just because it hasn’t had a release in four years?
Skimming the commit log one can see it certainly has had some bugs, and given that it is written in C it is reasonable to assume it has had some security-relevant ones. (eg, i’m not certain but this commit from a few months prior to the latest release looks like it could be fixing an actually exploitable bug?)
Currently there are 13 commits newer than the latest release. From a quick glance none appear to be obviously fixing security bugs (i guess there will be a new release when they next find some) but there are actually as-yet unreleased commits there fixing bugs… such as this one, made two days after the last release, which fixes searching being left-anchored.
I get it that programs would be big and have bugs. Minix creator said irrespective of language, there have been found typically 1 bug per 1000 LoC. I believe that bug free software is certainly possible. I have my hopes in microkernels with less than 15k LOC, and softwares made by suckless. Updates provide psychological reward that wow, my software is better now but I don’t think such a thing is possible. If for a minimal software like dwm, st, with no unnecessary feature, it could be bug free with zero bugs.