512341 - Security Build logic does not allow instrumenting the current code.

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(NSS :: Build, defect, P5)

Description

[Murali Nandigama [:murali]]

Check out the line # 341 in the link below.
http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/security/coreconf/rules.mk

This does not uptake the LDFLAGS passed from the .mozconfig and so this whole security code in coreconf, nss etc., is not getting instrumented.

We should change the line from 
$(MKSHLIB) -o $@ $(OBJS) $(SUB_SHLOBJS) $(LD_LIBS) $(EXTRA_LIBS) $(EXTRA_SHARED_LIBS) $(OS_LIBS)

to
$(MKSHLIB) -o $@ $(OBJS) $(SUB_SHLOBJS) $(LD_LIBS) $(LDFLAGS) $(EXTRA_LIBS) $(EXTRA_SHARED_LIBS) $(OS_LIBS)

Comment 1

[Nelson Bolyard (seldom reads bugmail)]

No, absolutely do not put LDFLAGS into the line with MKSHLIB in NSS.

Comment 2

[Murali Nandigama [:murali]]

May be I'm selfish and looking only at code coverage view. But I would be really I interested to know the reason for the NO in comment #1

I'm asking this question with pure technical interest and not questioning your judgement. Please indulge my curiosity. 

Rgds
murali

Comment 3

[Wan-Teh Chang]

Murali: there are a few Mozilla developers who know Mozilla's
and NSS's build systems very well.  You can find them in
bug 511743 (:bs, :luser, and cls).  They are the best people
to consult about this bug.

The fix of this bug will require changes to some NSS
makefiles and then pass your linker flags to NSS in
mozilla/security/manager/Makefile.in, similar to how you
pass your compiler flags to NSS:

http://bonsai.mozilla.org/cvsblame.cgi?file=mozilla/security/manager/Makefile.in&rev=1.84&mark=217-220#217

Comment 4

[Nelson Bolyard (seldom reads bugmail)]

I went and looked for places where LDFLAGS is used in existing NSS makefiles
and found 29 matching lines in 12 files.  See

http://mxr.mozilla.org/security/search?string=LDFLAGS&case=on&find=%2Fsecurity%2F%5Bnc%5D&findi=&filter=%5CbLDFLAGS&hitlimit=&tree=security

It appears to me that LDFLAGS is used to hold the linker flags for linking
executable programs, but not the linker flags for shared libraries.

Comment 5

[Murali Nandigama [:murali]]

I hope some one is still looking at instrumenting NSS. Should I continue finding non insecure ways to instrument the NSS still ?