Nmap Development mailing list archives
Re: [NSE] Script Dependencies Replacement for Runlevels
From: Patrick Donnelly <batrick () batbytes com>
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:22:31 -0500
Hi Fyodor, On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 10:20 PM, Fyodor <fyodor () insecure org> wrote:
My question is, do we need support for strong dependencies? I'm assuming I'm correct in thinking that strong dependencies are a new future, and that weak dependencies are equivalent to runlevels. If there is a use case for strong dependencies I'm not against them, but I would like to avoid having a --script-autoadd option.I could be missing something, but I think libraries can easily fill the need of a "strong dependency" script with less complication. The first time a library function is called it can (take a mutex to insure this isn't happening in parallel and) do the requested work for the caller and also save any results for future callers if desired. This allows the script to better communicate what it wants (e.g. it can specify parameters) and it also avoids users having to worry about specifying scripts which are only needed because some other script depends on them. Users should only have to specify what they want done (scripts) and shouldn't need to worry about their internal implementation.
It's admittedly difficult (for me) to identify a scenario where a script (strong) dependency makes more sense than the requiring of a library. Despite thinking about this a lot, I haven't decided which is better; however, my instinct is that libraries are inappropriate for doing the tasks that are better encapsulated in a script (fetching possible user names for later brute forcing) -- while I am making the http-spider functionality in a library, there will still be a script that actually runs the spider. Anyway, whatever you guys decide I'm ok with.
I think people will have trouble with the distinction between "strong" and "weak" dependencies. How about using a name like "run_after" for weak dependencies?weak_dependencies is a bit of a mouthful. run_after sounds a bit better. If we only support one kind of dependencies, we could use the "deps" keyword for them. It is short and already has an established meaning of "dependencies" in some circles. It might be a bit confusing if we're referring to the optional (weak) dependencies. So I'm fully open to other names.
The names (dependencies & weak_dependencies) are long but so are others (description). These names are written only once and need not be specified in every script (the default is an empty dependencies table). Here I think full names are fine. Also, there is no reason for a script to reference the dependencies table in their code so brevity doesn't gain us anything. -- -Patrick Donnelly "Let all men know thee, but no man know thee thoroughly: Men freely ford that see the shallows." - Benjamin Franklin _______________________________________________ Sent through the nmap-dev mailing list http://cgi.insecure.org/mailman/listinfo/nmap-dev Archived at http://seclists.org/nmap-dev/
Current thread:
- Re: [NSE] Script Dependencies Replacement for Runlevels, (continued)
- Re: [NSE] Script Dependencies Replacement for Runlevels David Fifield (Nov 09)
- Re: [NSE] Script Dependencies Replacement for Runlevels Ron (Nov 10)
- Re: [NSE] Script Dependencies Replacement for Runlevels David Fifield (Nov 10)
- Re: [NSE] Script Dependencies Replacement for Runlevels Ron (Nov 10)
- Re: [NSE] Script Dependencies Replacement for Runlevels Fyodor (Nov 10)
- Re: [NSE] Script Dependencies Replacement for Runlevels Fyodor (Nov 10)
- Re: [NSE] Script Dependencies Replacement for Runlevels Ron (Nov 10)
- Re: [NSE] Script Dependencies Replacement for Runlevels Ron (Nov 10)
- Re: [NSE] Script Dependencies Replacement for Runlevels David Fifield (Nov 09)
- Re: [NSE] Script Dependencies Replacement for Runlevels Patrick Donnelly (Nov 10)
- Re: [NSE] Script Dependencies Replacement for Runlevels Ron (Nov 10)
- Re: [NSE] Script Dependencies Replacement for Runlevels Fyodor (Nov 10)
- Re: [NSE] Script Dependencies Replacement for Runlevels Patrick Donnelly (Nov 12)
- Re: [NSE] Script Dependencies Replacement for Runlevels David Fifield (Nov 13)
- Re: [NSE] Script Dependencies Replacement for Runlevels Fyodor (Nov 13)
- Re: Requests for script dependencies Patrick Donnelly (Dec 27)
- Re: Requests for script dependencies David Fifield (Dec 27)
- Re: Requests for script dependencies Patrick Donnelly (Dec 28)
- Re: Requests for script dependencies Ron (Dec 28)