Re: [PATCH] scalar: avoid segfault in reconfigure --all

[Derrick Stolee <stolee@gmail.com>]

On 5/2/24 2:46 AM, Patrick Steinhardt wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 30, 2024 at 04:58:52PM +0000, Derrick Stolee via GitGitGadget wrote:
>> From: Derrick Stolee <stolee@gmail.com>
>>
>> During the latest v2.45.0 update, 'scalar reconfigure --all' started to
>> segfault on my machine. Breaking it down via the debugger, it was
>> faulting on a NULL reference to the_hash_algo, which is a macro pointing
>> to the_repository->hash_algo.
>>
>> This NULL reference appears to be due to the way the loop is abusing the
>> the_repository pointer, pointing it to a local repository struct after
>> discovering that the current directory is a valid Git repository. This
>> repo-swapping bit was in the original implementation from 4582676075
>> (scalar: teach 'reconfigure' to optionally handle all registered
>> enlistments, 2021-12-03), but only recently started segfaulting while
>> trying to parse the HEAD reference. This also only happens on the
>> _second_ repository in the list, so does not reproduce if there is only
>> one registered repo.
> Interesting. This also has some overlap with my patch series that aims
> to drop the default-SHA1 fallback that we have in place for
> `the_repository` [1].

Thanks for this pointer. It indeed will help.

>> Add a test to t9210-scalar.sh to test 'scalar reconfigure --all' with
>> multiple registered repos, as a precaution. Unfortunately, I was unable
>> to reproduce the segfault using this test, so there is some coverage
>> left to be desired. What exactly causes my setup to hit this bug but not
>> this test structure? Unclear.
> One way to trigger _a_ BUG is to use an "includeIf.onbranch:foobar.path"
> config. This will cause Git to try and look up the "HEAD" reference, but
> because we have a partially-configured repository, only, that will crash
> with:
>
>      BUG: refs.c:2123: reference backend is unknown

This is a good extra find. After your explanation for the second

test, I'm confident that I was hitting the detached HEAD case on

my machine.


I will shamelessly steal your tests in my v2.

> This issue should be fixed by my patch series in [1] because we start to
> use `get_oid_hex_any()` to parse detached HEADs.
>
> Anyway, your fix is indeed effective because with `repo_init()` we now
> properly configure the repository.

I appreciate that your series will fix this in a ref-focused way. I think

this change could prevent other bad interactions with the_repository in

the future.


Thanks,

-Stolee