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What is going on with serde? (social.treehouse.systems)
submitted 1 year ago by snaggen@programming.dev to c/rust@programming.dev
28 comments fedilink hide all child comments

So, serde seems to be downloading and running a binary on the system without informing the user and without any user consent. Does anyone have any background information on why this is, and how this is supposed to be a good idea?

dtolnay seems like a smart guy, so I assume there is a reason for this, but it doesn't feel ok at all.

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[-] Mechanize@feddit.it 38 points 1 year ago

It seems it was done to marginally improve serde_derive build times? And just on x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu?

It feels a pretty weird course of action, even if I can understand his point of view his official stance of "My way or the highway" seems a bit stronger than needed, especially considering the amount of problems - both moral and pratical - this modification arises.

I don't know. If he really feel so strongly about it the only real option would be an hard fork, but a project of that magnitudo and so integrated in the ecosystem is really not easy to both manage or substitute.

Overall it kind of leave a sour taste, even if - I repeat - I understand it is his time and his decision to make.

[-] manpacket@lemmyrs.org 17 points 1 year ago

It seems it was done to marginally improve serde_derive build times? And just on x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu?

Indeed. If you use nix instead of compiling in 8 seconds it fails to compile almost instantly.

[-] tatterdemalion@programming.dev 14 points 1 year ago

The same feature is planned for Windows and MacOS. https://github.com/serde-rs/serde/pull/2523#pullrequestreview-1583726636

The build time improvements are so marginal in a production environment where hundreds of crates are built. This decision demonstrates a strange inversion of priorities and smells of premature optimization to me. It's so odd to see even further optimizations building on this "serde helper process" pattern.

[-] BB_C@programming.dev 22 points 1 year ago

I hate that I'm linking to Reddit, but I'm just reminded of this.

Some of us knew where all the obsession with dependencies' compile times will lead, and triggered the alarm sirens, if half-jerkingly, years ago.

Compile times, and more specifically, dependencies compile times, is and has always been the most overblown problem in Rust. We would have some sort of sccache public repositories or something similar by now if it was that big of a problem.

And yes, I'm aware proc-macro crates in particular present unique challenges in that field. But that shouldn't change the general stance towards the supposed "problem". And it should certainly not trigger such an obsession that would lead to such a horrible "solution" like this serde one.

[-] Mechanize@feddit.it 20 points 1 year ago

I hate that I’m linking to Reddit, but I’m just reminded of this.

OT, but remember you can always use an archived link instead of a live one.

[-] Barbacamanitu@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

I get why the binary is there, but there really should be a simple way to force compilation instead of downloading a precompiled binary.

Serde is incredible though, so it can get away with basically anything it wants.

[-] manpacket@lemmyrs.org 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Serde is incredible though

Sure. Fork of it can be incredible too. In fact the only difference can be traditional approach to building the derive macro. All it takes is for people to switch.

[-] Vorpal@lemmyrs.org 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I saw some other crate doing something similar but using wasm, the idea is to sandbox the binary used as a proc macro. So that seems a bit better. Can't see to find it any more.

EDIT: Found it https://lib.rs/crates/watt

[-] Anders429@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

Fun fact: the guy who wrote watt is the same guy who wrote serde.

[-] Mubelotix@jlai.lu 8 points 1 year ago

Made by the same guy

[-] manpacket@lemmyrs.org 7 points 1 year ago

serde is maintained by dtolnay, he is not the original author.

[-] Mubelotix@jlai.lu 5 points 1 year ago

I thought he was a genious inventing so many useful tools. Does he maintain other projects he didn't create?

[-] manpacket@lemmyrs.org 9 points 1 year ago

Not sure, possibly. You still need to be pretty smart maintaining and extending all those tools.

[-] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

Sandboxing the binary doesn't protect you. It can still insert malicious code into your application.

[-] Lucky@programming.dev 13 points 1 year ago

The second comment explains a lot. There is a build script that generated the binary, which they are using to reduce the overall build time. They mention this resulting from a limitation on cargo and this being a workaround

It seems like you could build it all from scratch if needed with a bit of effort

[-] Mubelotix@jlai.lu 8 points 1 year ago

Wow, thank you for making me aware

[-] TehPers@beehaw.org 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm a bit confused, proc macros could always execute arbitrary code on developer machines. As long as the source for the precompiled binary is available (which seems to be the case here), how is this any different than what any other proc macro is doing?

Edit: I should add that any package, macro or not, can also do so in a build.rs script.

[-] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 10 points 1 year ago

One problem is that the build isn't easily reproducible: there are a few comments in that issue thread from someone trying to reproduce it and failing.

[-] TehPers@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago

That seems like it could be an issue, but not the issue being raised by the post. The original post was talking about executing binary code on a user's machine without consent. The thing is, this is how a lot of Rust packages work. Any package can have a build.rs that runs arbitrary code on a developer's machine (that gets compiled into a binary automatically by Cargo). Any proc macro is arbitrary code that gets compiled into a binary and executed on a developer's machine. In fact, any library, regardless of if there's a build.rs or if it's a proc macro, can have malicious code in it that gets executed when a developer calls a specific method.

None of this is new. When done maliciously, it's called a supply-chain attack. All packages can do this. This is part of why there's been interest in executing some of this code in WASM runtimes within the compiler, so that developers can explicitly control the level of impact those packages can have on a developer's machine. That being said, WASM doesn't solve the fact that any package can just have malicious code in it that gets executed during runtime. This is why people should vet their packages themselves (when it's important, at least) to ensure that this won't happen to them.

[-] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 8 points 1 year ago

If the executable were easily reproducible from the source code, then yes, downloading a precompiled binary would be akin to executing code in build.rs or a proc macro. The fact that it's not makes these very different, because it makes your suggestion of "vet[ting] their packages themselves" impossible.

[-] TehPers@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm not seeing where in serde we're downloading a precompiled binary. I see a script we can execute ourselves in the repository and an alternative serde_derive that uses that executable (after we compile it), but not where the actual published package has the executable.

It's possible I'm missing something here though.

[-] BB_C@programming.dev 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) 
bsdtar tfv ᐸ(curl -sL https://static.crates.io/crates/serde_derive/serde_derive-1.0.183.crate)

Edit: Ogh, using ᐸ which is a replacement character because Lemmy escapes the real one. This is annoying.

There, you will see that this file exists:

-rwxr-xr-x  0 0      0      690320 Jul 24  2006 serde_derive-1.0.183/serde_derive-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu

Yes, that's a pre-built binary in the crate source release. It's that bad.

[-] TehPers@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Looks like I missed that, I was checking locally but I must have been checking an outdated version of the package. I'd feel better about it if it compiled on the user's machine, which is the impression I was getting.

[-] manpacket@lemmyrs.org 7 points 1 year ago

You can read a build.rs script.

Then there's this: http://cm.bell-labs.co/who/ken/trust.html

[-] lolcatnip@reddthat.com 1 points 1 year ago

You can read the source of build.rs and and proc macros executed during a build, but do you? Does anyone do that every time they add a new dependency?

[-] manpacket@lemmyrs.org 5 points 1 year ago

When adding a new dependency I almost always go over the source code to see what kind of performance to expect. If build.rs is there - checking it takes a single click so yes to that too. Derive macro - less frequently, but you have to do it when documentation is non existent.

[-] TehPers@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

I'm not sure I follow what that link has to do with this, though. serde is open source, anyone can go compile it themselves. In fact, from what I can tell, to get the precompiled version of serde_derive, you need to compile it yourself anyway. Compiling these proc-macros to binaries before executing the code isn't new, this is what Cargo does with all proc macros.

Also, I might be misreading the source here, but it looks like the executable needs to be manually compiled by the user on their own (by running the precompiled/build.sh script), and they need to manually add the precompiled variant of serde_derive as a dependency instead of using the version that's on crates.io. Am I missing something here? Is this automatically used by the published version of serde somewhere?

[-] manpacket@lemmyrs.org 6 points 1 year ago

No, serde_derive contains the binary and if you are on linux it will try to run it without asking the user. In fact there's no way to make it so it won't run.

this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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