Dangerous `rm -rf` in CLI

[vapor]

Dangerous `rm -rf` in CLI

[tanner0101]

Thanks @shnhrrsn. I'll merge this.

[tanner0101]

that seems like it would function normally unless I'm mistaken

[zef]

Doing something like that would remove the user's root directory right? It's just that you can't expect people to know that an unchecked rm is going to be performed inside your command. It's not like people should be typing something like that on purpose, but if it was an accident or it somehow happened, it would be really terrible.

So basically I think it's the responsibility of a tool like this to make sure that kind of thing is not even possible. In this specific case maybe you could check that the directory exists and that it's a .git directory before running the command. Make sure there are no spaces in the name that's passed in, something like that.

Hope that helps!

[tanner0101]

If you do vapor new / it will create a new vapor project in the root directory of your application then remove the .git folder normally.

It can only delete something with .git after it. Also unless you ran it with sudo attempting to delete the root folder would be denied.

[zef]

Thanks for the response... Last thing: the way it would delete something undesirable is if there was whitespace: vapor new / something would call rm -rf / something, and rm would execute for both / and something.git/. / is really just a placeholder for whatever undesirable thing you don't actually want deleted. Looking at the rest it might not get that far if the git clone failed due to weird arguments or something. Regardless just seems scary to me to pass that straight through without doing any checking.

[tanner0101]

Ah okay, I see what you mean. Yeah that would fail the git clone for sure.

[tanner0101]

People once thought it was scary to drive with tanks of explosive liquid attached to the bottom of their cars.