full-disclosure - Linus mass killing integer overflows

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Date: Sat Apr  1 08:58:50 2006
From: guninski at guninski.com (Georgi Guninski)
Subject: Linus mass killing integer overflows

unofficial C++ support for the linux kernel has been for quite a while:
[1] http://netlab.ru.is/exception/LinuxCXX.shtml
--quote
C++ in the Linux Kernel

    We have implemented a complete kernel level run-time support for C++ in 
the Linux kernel. In particular our run-time support enables the full use 
of C++ exceptions in the Linux kernel, but notably also includes support 
for global constructors and destructors, and dynamic type checking.
--quote

the news is, the benevolant dictator has said "let there be C++", and there
is more secure, full featured, reliable and faster linux kernel written[2]
mainly in C++. the official release is scheduled for 2.8 or when redhat(tm)
becomes ready for the desktop[3], whichever comes first.

key improvements include:

a) integer overflows *were* PITA for the kernel janitors. once the classes
SafeInt and SafeLong were implemented with suitable operators, the new
kernel is 100% "int/long too big" free. the refactoring tool made this part
easy.
b) some clever abuse of exceptions dramatically reduces the amount of OOPS:
cases like '*(SafeInt*)0=foo->bar()' are now gracefully catch()ed, killing
the OOPS.
c) kernel structures *were* just lame emulation of C++ objects. now they are
native C++ objects.
d) exceptions result in cleaner, easier to read code and almost stop the nasty
abuse of "goto"

currently there are discussions for implementing COM in the
kernel and/or scripting the kernel from userland, but Linus hasn't made up
his mind yet.

the first public prerelease will be available from 
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel soon.

--
[1] http://netlab.ru.is/exception/LinuxCXX.shtml
[2] "written" is not quite correct. the existing C codebase was refactored
to C++ using a sophisticated refactoring tool based on sparse
[3] http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5101690.html