* [PATCH] HACKING: add a note about avoiding recursion
@ 2019-10-24 21:09 Eric Wong
0 siblings, 0 replies; only message in thread
From: Eric Wong @ 2019-10-24 21:09 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: meta
Bad things happen when user data can control our stack size.
---
Maybe there's programming languages where deep recursion isn't
a problem, but they're not widely available on common GNU/Linux
or *BSD systems.
HACKING | 5 +++++
1 file changed, 5 insertions(+)
diff --git a/HACKING b/HACKING
index 666d504e..859745ef 100644
--- a/HACKING
+++ b/HACKING
@@ -43,6 +43,11 @@ distribute and verify. public-inbox itself will only be implemented
in scripting languages (currently Perl 5) and optional JIT-compiled C
(via Inline::C)
+Do not recurse on user-supplied data. Neither Perl or C handle
+deep recursion gracefully. See lib/PublicInbox/SearchThread.pm
+and lib/PublicInbox/MsgIter.pm for examples of non-recursive
+alternatives to previously-recursive algorithms.
+
Performance should be reasonably good for server administrators, too,
and we will sacrifice features to achieve predictable performance.
Encouraging folks to self-host will be easier with lower hardware
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