Hi wine community,
I took some time for reflexion following the thread "A step in the wrong direction, in an ocean of steps in the right direction" and to the explanations some of you kindly exposed to me.
As a follow-up I am making a proposal.
A - The proposal
A1 - The core proposal
All function callable from outside wine should implement, as the first task they perform(1), a sanity parameter check. This check hasn't to be systematic, only really used parameters should be checked and only checks assuring those parameters can be safely used the way they are in the function implementation (or in a function called by it). Other check are superfluous and must be discarded.
So to decline the proposal operationally, I will take an example(2) :
BOOL WINAPI GetOverlappedResult(HANDLE hFile, LPOVERLAPPED lpOverlapped, [...])
if ( lpOverlapped == NULL ) { #Call the function ExitWineCleanlyAndAdvertiseUser }
This call being justified by the statement, following some lines later : status = lpOverlapped->Internal;
The function ExitWineCleanlyAndAdvertiseUser being something like that :
<Result to be determined> ExitWineCleanlyAndAdvertiseUser <Parameters to be determined>
#1 - Advertise user outputting a message, for example : "The application you used present a defect. Using it directly expose you to some security issue and indirectly expose others users to some other security issue."
#2 - Cleanly release all still allocated resources
#3 - Cleanly exit wine
A2 - offering flexibility
As I have understood that wine community is willing to be able to run all applications written for a Windows platform, even those relying on the worse behaviours of windows, I will propose too to add a registry key for the purpose of enabling / disabling wine "safe" mode. In this case it would make sense that "safe" mode is the default, with possibility to fall-back to "unsafe" mode when needed.
B - Advantages / Drawbacks to the proposal
Drawback of this solution I can think of are : 1 - It is contrary to the current consensus 2 - It implies a lot of work (even if this can be done bit by bit over a long period time, direction is what matters here) 3 - Detailed implementation of what I presented may very well not be as simple as I imagine, or even impossible 4 - Maybe all the reasons have not been expressed in the previous thread, thus not considered here 5 - It can go against the interest of the author of those apps relying on Windows's bad behaviors (large firms for example) 6 - It doesn't cover all security issue in wine and it doesn't cover at all security issue in the calling app 7 - Performance drop-down may be expected (0,01%, 0,1%, 1%, more ? I don't know how to evaluate)
Advantage of this solution I can think of are : 1 - Top-notch level of service to user : I can be informed when I use an unsafe software ! 2 - Encouragement to software industry : I must provide some clean and safe software or wine can judge me "unsafe" (=promoting "best-practices") 3 - Wine is better from it, so people will have a better opinion of wine 4 - Goal reached by wine are far beyond "Windows behaviours on free-OS platform" 5 - Wine is safer so more people will want to use it and to promote its usage
I think I will go no further than this proposal, so I leave the rest to you, from simply ignoring it to demonstrate me than I'm wrong or applying a variation, Guillaume
(1) TRACE, variable declaration or other task may come before though (2) Please don't argue about the coding style, I am not a technical expert (unlike you) and it would be off-topic