GNU bug report logs - #68074
eshell sudo/doas does not work for aliases

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Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Alfonso Sanchez-Beato <alfonsosanchezbeato <at> yahoo.es>
To: "bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org" <bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org>
Subject: eshell sudo/doas does not work for aliases
Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2023 21:12:26 +0000 (UTC)

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

sudo/doas does not give the expected permissions when using an eshell alias:

When no alias has been defined:

~ $ which cp
eshell/cp is a native-compiled Lisp function in ‘em-unix.el’.
~ $ touch test
~ $ cp test /boot/efi/
Opening output file: Permission denied, /boot/efi/test
~ $ sudo cp test /boot/efi/
~ $ echo $?
0

But after defining the alias:

~ $ alias cp '*cp $*'
~ $ which cp
cp is an alias, defined as "*cp $*"
~ $ sudo cp test /boot/efi/
/usr/bin/cp: cannot stat '/boot/efi/test': Permission denied

I have attached a patch with a possible fix.

[0001-lisp-eshell-em-alias.el-eshell-maybe-replace-by-alia.patch (text/x-patch, attachment)]

Message #10 received at 68074 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Stefan Kangas <stefankangas <at> gmail.com>
To: Alfonso Sanchez-Beato <alfonsosanchezbeato <at> yahoo.es>
Cc: Jim Porter <jporterbugs <at> gmail.com>, 68074 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#68074: eshell sudo/doas does not work for aliases
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2024 13:00:17 -0800

Alfonso Sanchez-Beato <alfonsosanchezbeato <at> yahoo.es> writes:

> sudo/doas does not give the expected permissions when using an eshell alias:
>
> When no alias has been defined:
>
> ~ $ which cp
> eshell/cp is a native-compiled Lisp function in ‘em-unix.el’.
> ~ $ touch test
> ~ $ cp test /boot/efi/
> Opening output file: Permission denied, /boot/efi/test
> ~ $ sudo cp test /boot/efi/
> ~ $ echo $?
> 0
>
> But after defining the alias:
>
> ~ $ alias cp '*cp $*'
> ~ $ which cp
> cp is an alias, defined as "*cp $*"
> ~ $ sudo cp test /boot/efi/
> /usr/bin/cp: cannot stat '/boot/efi/test': Permission denied
>
> I have attached a patch with a possible fix.

Jim, could you take a look at this patch please?

Message #13 received at 68074 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Jim Porter <jporterbugs <at> gmail.com>
To: Stefan Kangas <stefankangas <at> gmail.com>,
 Alfonso Sanchez-Beato <alfonsosanchezbeato <at> yahoo.es>
Cc: 68074 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#68074: eshell sudo/doas does not work for aliases
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2024 13:15:21 -0800

On 1/11/2024 1:00 PM, Stefan Kangas wrote:
> Alfonso Sanchez-Beato <alfonsosanchezbeato <at> yahoo.es> writes:
> 
>> sudo/doas does not give the expected permissions when using an eshell alias:
[snip]
>> I have attached a patch with a possible fix.
> 
> Jim, could you take a look at this patch please?

I've been meaning to look at this in detail, but haven't had time. My 
gut feeling though is that we shouldn't have a special case in this code 
for when the alias starts with "cd". I'll have to do some testing with 
aliases and sudo in order to have a more-helpful answer though.

At a guess, I think a better place to add code for this is likely in 
em-tramp.el.

Message #16 received at 68074 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Jim Porter <jporterbugs <at> gmail.com>
To: Stefan Kangas <stefankangas <at> gmail.com>,
 Alfonso Sanchez-Beato <alfonsosanchezbeato <at> yahoo.es>
Cc: 68074 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#68074: eshell sudo/doas does not work for aliases
Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2024 18:43:43 -0800

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

On 1/11/2024 1:15 PM, Jim Porter wrote:
> I've been meaning to look at this in detail, but haven't had time. My 
> gut feeling though is that we shouldn't have a special case in this code 
> for when the alias starts with "cd". I'll have to do some testing with 
> aliases and sudo in order to have a more-helpful answer though.
> 
> At a guess, I think a better place to add code for this is likely in 
> em-tramp.el.

After letting this percolate in my brain for a few weeks, the answer 
revealed itself to me: the functions in "em-tramp.el" shouldn't throw 
'eshell-external', they should throw 'eshell-replace-command'. That 
allows for a two-step command replacement in this case. First, 
'eshell/sudo' (or 'eshell/doas') will do its replacement. Then, Eshell 
will evaluate that and call the inner command, which will do another 
replacement to expand the alias.

Alfonso, does the attached patch work for you? If so, I'll merge it to 
master.

[0001-Fix-command-replacement-with-the-Eshell-builtin-vers.patch (text/plain, attachment)]

Message #19 received at 68074 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Alfonso Sanchez-Beato <alfonsosanchezbeato <at> yahoo.es>
To: Stefan Kangas <stefankangas <at> gmail.com>, Jim Porter <jporterbugs <at> gmail.com>
Cc: "68074 <at> debbugs.gnu.org" <68074 <at> debbugs.gnu.org>
Subject: Re: bug#68074: eshell sudo/doas does not work for aliases
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2024 23:53:00 +0000 (UTC)

En jueves, 25 de enero de 2024, 02:43:46 GMT, Jim Porter <jporterbugs <at> gmail.com> escribió: 


On 1/11/2024 1:15 PM, Jim Porter wrote:

>> I've been meaning to look at this in detail, but haven't had time. My 
>> gut feeling though is that we shouldn't have a special case in this code 
>> for when the alias starts with "cd". I'll have to do some testing with 
>> aliases and sudo in order to have a more-helpful answer though.
>> 
>> At a guess, I think a better place to add code for this is likely in 
>> em-tramp.el.


> After letting this percolate in my brain for a few weeks, the answer 
> revealed itself to me: the functions in "em-tramp.el" shouldn't throw 
> 'eshell-external', they should throw 'eshell-replace-command'. That 
> allows for a two-step command replacement in this case. First, 
> 'eshell/sudo' (or 'eshell/doas') will do its replacement. Then, Eshell 
> will evaluate that and call the inner command, which will do another 
> replacement to expand the alias.

> Alfonso, does the attached patch work for you? If so, I'll merge it to 
> master.

Unfortunately that does not seem to be the case, I see an error saying "Invalid function" after applying on top of current master:

$ which cp
cp is an alias, defined as "*cp $*"
$ touch foo
$ eshell/sudo cp foo /
Invalid function: "foo"
[1] $

Message #22 received at 68074 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Jim Porter <jporterbugs <at> gmail.com>
To: Alfonso Sanchez-Beato <alfonsosanchezbeato <at> yahoo.es>,
 Stefan Kangas <stefankangas <at> gmail.com>
Cc: "68074 <at> debbugs.gnu.org" <68074 <at> debbugs.gnu.org>
Subject: Re: bug#68074: eshell sudo/doas does not work for aliases
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2024 16:27:44 -0800

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

On 1/26/2024 3:53 PM, Alfonso Sanchez-Beato via Bug reports for GNU 
Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors wrote:
> Unfortunately that does not seem to be the case, I see an error saying "Invalid function" after applying on top of current master:

Oops, I messed up the quoting. How about this?

[0001-Fix-command-replacement-with-the-Eshell-builtin-vers.patch (text/plain, attachment)]

Message #25 received at 68074 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Jim Porter <jporterbugs <at> gmail.com>
To: Alfonso Sanchez-Beato <alfonsosanchezbeato <at> yahoo.es>,
 Stefan Kangas <stefankangas <at> gmail.com>
Cc: "68074 <at> debbugs.gnu.org" <68074 <at> debbugs.gnu.org>
Subject: Re: bug#68074: eshell sudo/doas does not work for aliases
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2024 17:19:28 -0800

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

On 1/26/2024 4:27 PM, Jim Porter wrote:
> On 1/26/2024 3:53 PM, Alfonso Sanchez-Beato via Bug reports for GNU 
> Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors wrote:
>> Unfortunately that does not seem to be the case, I see an error saying 
>> "Invalid function" after applying on top of current master:
> 
> Oops, I messed up the quoting. How about this?

... actually, this is a more-complete patch. I'm not 100% sure about 
this part though:

  ',(car args)

That (usually) creates something like (quote "command"), but it's safer 
than not quoting (the CAR of 'args' can be anything, really...)

[0001-Fix-command-replacement-with-the-Eshell-builtin-vers.patch (text/plain, attachment)]

Message #28 received at 68074 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Alfonso Sanchez-Beato <alfonsosanchezbeato <at> yahoo.es>
To: Stefan Kangas <stefankangas <at> gmail.com>, Jim Porter <jporterbugs <at> gmail.com>
Cc: "68074 <at> debbugs.gnu.org" <68074 <at> debbugs.gnu.org>
Subject: Re: bug#68074: eshell sudo/doas does not work for aliases
Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2024 08:46:10 +0000 (UTC)

 En sábado, 27 de enero de 2024, 01:19:32 GMT, Jim Porter <jporterbugs <at> gmail.com> escribió: 


On 1/26/2024 4:27 PM, Jim Porter wrote:

>> On 1/26/2024 3:53 PM, Alfonso Sanchez-Beato via Bug reports for GNU 
>> Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors wrote:
>>> Unfortunately that does not seem to be the case, I see an error saying 
>>> "Invalid function" after applying on top of current master:
>> 
>> Oops, I messed up the quoting. How about this?


> ... actually, this is a more-complete patch. I'm not 100% sure about 
> this part though:
>
>  ',(car args)
>
> That (usually) creates something like (quote "command"), but it's safer 
> than not quoting (the CAR of 'args' can be anything, really...)

This last patch works nicely, thanks a lot! It works also in cases where my patch was not, like:

$ eshell/sudo VAR=val <alias> ...

Message #33 received at 68074-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Jim Porter <jporterbugs <at> gmail.com>
To: Alfonso Sanchez-Beato <alfonsosanchezbeato <at> yahoo.es>,
 Stefan Kangas <stefankangas <at> gmail.com>
Cc: 68074-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#68074: eshell sudo/doas does not work for aliases
Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2024 12:24:46 -0800

On 1/27/2024 12:46 AM, Alfonso Sanchez-Beato via Bug reports for GNU 
Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors wrote:
> 
>   En sábado, 27 de enero de 2024, 01:19:32 GMT, Jim Porter <jporterbugs <at> gmail.com> escribió:
>> ... actually, this is a more-complete patch. I'm not 100% sure about
>> this part though:
>>
>>    ',(car args)
>>
>> That (usually) creates something like (quote "command"), but it's safer

I thought about this some more and the extraneous quoting is fine in my 
opinion. Eshell already does that quite a bit in 'eshell-do-eval', so 
what's one more case?

> This last patch works nicely, thanks a lot! It works also in cases where my patch was not, like:
> 
> $ eshell/sudo VAR=val <alias> ...

Wait, that works?! (After trying it out locally, so it does!)

Looking at the code, I see why now: 'eshell-named-command' calls 
'eshell-prepare-command-hook', and that hook is where we handle local 
variables. However, I truly didn't expect that; I thought the local 
variable handling occurred in an earlier phase. The more you know...

Anyway, since this works even better than I'd expected, I've now merged 
my patch to the master branch as 3c680968e49. Closing this bug now.

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