GNU bug report logs - #53293
29.0.50; [PATCH] `eshell-eval-using-options' should report error for unrecognized option, even with no :external

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From: Jim Porter <jporterbugs <at> gmail.com>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 53293 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#53293: 29.0.50; [PATCH] `eshell-eval-using-options' should report error for unrecognized option, even with no :external
Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2022 12:31:37 -0800

On 1/16/2022 1:04 AM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> From: Jim Porter <jporterbugs <at> gmail.com>
>> Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2022 20:03:46 -0800
>>
>> Despite this incompatibility, I still think this is the right change to
>> make for all these commands. If a user passes unrecognized options to
>> any of these, they should be informed of that fact.
> 
> OTOH, with the current behavior shell scripts that use options not
> supported by Eshell commands will silently run unaltered, wheres with
> your change they will error out.  Do we care about this?

Yeah, that's one of the tricky parts about this. On the one hand, some 
options (boolean flags) can be silently ignored without altering the 
meaning of the command *too* much; on the other hand, some options 
(especially those taking an argument) can't be ignored without 
drastically changing the meaning. The latter case comes up with commands 
like "su -c CMD". In a regular shell, this will run CMD as root, but in 
Eshell, it silently ignores the "-c", so the command looks like "su 
CMD"; thus, it means "switch to the user named CMD (via the TRAMP su 
method)".

Since some options can be (relatively) safely ignored and others can't, 
maybe the best approach would be to audit the list of commands I posted 
in the original message to see if there are any options that users might 
specify that we can silently ignore. Then we can update the option spec 
for those commands to parse those options but not do anything with them.

Here are all the affected Eshell commands compared to their shell 
equivalents:

addpath
  No direct shell equivalent. Erroring out on unrecognized options
  should therefore be safe.

echo
  Eshell echo works quite a bit differently by default. From
  eshell/em-basic.el, it outputs "in a Lisp-friendly fashion (so that
  the value of echo is useful to a Lisp command using the result of
  echo as an argument)". However, with `eshell-plain-echo-behavior' set
  to non-nil, it works more like shell echo. I'm aware of 3 options for
  various implementations of shell echo:

  -n: suppress trailing newline
    This is recognized by Eshell echo, but actually does the opposite:
    it *inserts* a trailing newline. I posted a patch to help improve
    this to bug#27361.
  -e: enable interpretation of escape sequences
    This could probably be accepted by Eshell echo and ignored for now,
    though it would cause some behavioral differences. Warning or
    erroring out when seeing this option would also be reasonable, I
    think.
  -E: disable interpretation of escape sequences
    This is the default behavior for echo, so there's really no reason
    *not* to support this option.
  --version: display the version
    I doubt this option is used much in scripts, but it wouldn't be hard
    to support.

history
  Eshell history has some similar options to Bash history. It supports
  -r, -w, and -a to read, write, and append to the history file,
  respectively. It also supports getting the Nth history item via
  "history N". However, Bash history has some additional options:

  -c: clear history
    This could theoretically be accepted by Eshell history and ignored,
    but that would be pretty surprising. If a script is clearing
    history, there's probably a reason for it, so I think it's best to
    error out when seeing this option for now. However, it shouldn't be
    too hard to implement in Eshell if people want it.
  -d offset / -d start-end: delete history at offset or in range
    For the same reasons as -c, I think it's best to error out when
    seeing this option.
  -p args: perform history substitution on args
    Since this is supposed to show the result of a history substitution,
    I think it should error out so as not to cause any confusion or
    return an invalid result.
  -s: add history-substituted args to history list
    This is just an additional option to control the behavior of -p, so
    the same logic as above applies to this too.

source / .
  It seems Eshell's implementation of these actually has a bug! In a
  regular shell, running "source file.sh -a -b" would pass -a and -b to
  file.sh. However, Eshell's source command currently drops -a and -b
  silently. There are two ways I can think of to fix this:

  a) stop using `eshell-eval-using-options' entirely. This means that
     "source --help" changes from showing the help message to sourcing a
     file named "--help" (this is consistent with source in regular
     shells)
  b) using :parse-leading-options-only, which will stop looking for
     options once it sees a non-option argument like "file.sh".

su
  This (and sudo) both use the TRAMP methods of the same name, so there
  are probably pretty significant differences between the shell meaning
  and the Eshell meaning. I'm not super-familiar with how these TRAMP
  methods work though. Here are the options available:

  -c / --command CMD: run command CMD
  -s / --shell SHELL: run the specified shell
  --session-command CMD: run command CMD with no new session
    All of these take an argument that should affect what gets run by
    su. I think erroring out makes sense for all of them.
  -g / --group GROUP: specify a group
  -G / --supp-group GROUP: specify a supplemental group
  -w / --whitelist-environment LIST
    These are all options that take an argument and which users would
    probably expect to do what they say, since they affect security. I
    think erroring out makes sense for all of them.
  -f / --fast: pass -f to the shell
    Since the manual for su says this "may or may not be useful,
    depending on the shell", it would probably be ok to ignore. However,
    I'm not sure this is a very common option, so maybe erroring out is
    fine too.
  - / -l / --login: provide a login environment
    This is supported by Eshell's su command.
  -m / -p / --preserve-environment: preserve all env vars
    If a user wants to preserve the environment, we shouldn't just
    ignore that. However, since the shell su command ignores this when
    --login is set, we could ignore it then too. That's probably not
    particularly useful though. When would a user explicitly pass both
    --login and --preserve-environment?
  -P / --pty: create a pseudo-terminal
    I'm not sure what to do about this one. It might be reasonable to
    ignore this, but on the other hand, a user requesting a PTY probably
    has a reason for it and might be unpleasantly surprised if we just
    ignore that request.
  -V / --version: display version
    As with echo --version, I doubt this option is used much in scripts,
    but it wouldn't be hard to support.

sudo
  This is similar to the su command above, but sudo has a lot more
  options.

  -E / --preserve-env[=LIST]: preserve all/selected env vars
  -g / --group GROUP: specify a group
    These work like the corresponding su options and so I think erroring
    out is best here too.
  -A / --askpass: use a helper program to ask for the password
  -C / --close-from NUM: close file descriptors >= NUM
  -H / --set-home: set the HOME env var
  -K / --remove-timestamp: remove cached credentials
  -k / --reset-timestamp: invalidate cached credentials
  -P / --preserve-groups: preserve invoking user's group
  -r / --role ROLE: set SELinux role
  -t / --type TYPE: set SELinux type
  -v / --validate: validate cached credentials
    These all directly affect security, so we should be safe and error
    out instead of ignoring them.
  -B / --bell: ring the bell in the password prompt
    Since this is just a beep, it would probably be ok to ignore.
    However, I'm not sure this is a very common option, so maybe
    erroring out is fine too.
  -b / --background: run command in background
    It might be ok to ignore this, but I'm not sure what the
    implications of doing so would be. I'd err on the side of caution
    and report an error for this option.
  -e / --edit: edit a file instead of running command
  -i / --login: run the user's login shell
  -s / --shell: run the shell set in SHELL env var
    These all affect what command is actually run, so we should error
    out instead of silently running the wrong command.
  -h / --host HOST: run command on specified HOST
    This isn't supported, but unfortunately, we use "-h" to mean "help",
    which could result in confusing output. (sudo uses a "-h" without an
    argument for "help" and a -h with one for "host".) However, I don't
    think it will *do* anything invalid (aside from printing the help
    message), so it should be ok for now.
  -l / --list: list allowed/forbidden commands for user
  -u / --user USER: set user for --list
    These both drastically change what sudo does, so erroring out is the
    right thing to do, I think.
  -n / --non-interactive: don't prompt user
  -p / --prompt PROMPT: customize the password prompt
  -S / --stdin: read password from stdin
    I think these are mostly applicable to using sudo from a script, but
    I'm not sure there's an easy analogue for using them in Eshell. I
    don't know what to do about these.
  -V / --version: display version
    As with echo --version, I doubt this option is used much in scripts,
    but it wouldn't be hard to support.

umask
  Eshell's version of this is a bit limited in that it can only set the
  umask if you pass a numeric value. It also only supports the -S
  (symbolic format) option.

  -p: output in a form reusable as input
    I don't think Eshell's umask really supports this properly (in part
    because it can't accept symbol umasks as input), so it's probably
    good to error out in this case.

----------------------------------------

In conclusion, I think it would make sense to do the following:

* Add support for "echo -E" (no-op) and possibly ignore "echo -e".
* Fix the bug with the source command
* Consider whether to add support for --version to various Eshell commands.
* Decide what, if anything, to do with some of the su/sudo options 
listed above.

However, I welcome other people's thoughts on this. Hopefully the audit 
above will be enough for people to make an informed opinion about the 
right thing to do.

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