2.3b2: Slow commands (several seconds) under SunOS / Sparc

[Eric Siegerman]

On Fri, 2010-11-19 at 10:33 +1100, Martin Pool wrote:
> > For future reference, be aware that (at least) PATH and
> > LD_LIBRARY_PATH [...]
> > also interpret a null component as ".".  Python's not the
> > strange one here; it's following a well established, if
> > unfortunate, tradition.
> 
> Is there anywhere we could/should document this, or warn about this,
> to avoid problems in future?

Good question.  I'm not inclined to see this as Bazaar's problem,
or even Python's; it's a standard bit of *NIX lore, that anyone
messing with PATH-like variables really should know.[*]

But that's my *NIX bias showing; I presume that Windows users
aren't stumbling across the issue all the time (if for no other
reason that on Windows, PATH always implicitly includes ".".)

What say you, Windows folks?

> Unfortunately I don't know if documentation will work, as people can't
> easily identify the problem beyond "it's just slow".

Agreed, unless one wants to get into a whole essay that basically
recapitulates the diagnostic procedure that went on in this
thread, and goes on to cover other situations as well -- and
that, ISTM, is *really* beyond the scope of the documentation for
a VCS.

I suppose it could usefully go in a FAQ somewhere.

> Perhaps we could warn if '.' or '' is in sys.path?  For people running
> './bzr selftest' that's useful; otherwise it's probably a mistake?

For anyone who intentionally sets things up this way (which might
under some circumstances be desirable, despite the security
risk), the constant warnings would be a major pain.  Couldn't
hurt to write it to .bzr.log though.

[*] There are security risks if one includes the current
    directory in PATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, PYTHONPATH, CLASSPATH, or
    any other PATH-like variable that's searched for runnable
    code.  (It opens you up to trojans; suppose someone plants a
    malware executable file in /tmp/ls, and you, as root, type
    the equivalent of "cd /tmp; ls".)

  - Eric