New vulnerability fixes in Python 2.7 (and PyPy)

As you probably know (and aren’t necessarily happy about it), Gentoo is actively working on eliminating Python 2.7 support from packages until end of 2020. Nevertheless, we are going to keep the Python 2.7 interpreter much longer because of some build-time dependencies. While we do that, we consider it important to keep Python 2.7 as secure as possible.

The last Python 2.7 release was in April 2020. Since then, at least Gentoo and Fedora have backported CVE-2019-20907 (infinite loop in tarfile) fix to it, mostly because the patch from Python 3 applied cleanly to Python 2.7. I’ve indicated that Python 2.7 may contain more vulnerabilities, and two days ago I’ve finally gotten to audit it properly as part of bumping PyPy.

The result is matching two more vulnerabilities that were discovered in Python 3.6, and backporting fixes for them: CVE-2020-8492 (ReDoS in basic HTTP auth handling) and bpo-39603 (header injection via HTTP method). I am pleased to announce that Gentoo is probably the first distribution to address these issues, and our Python 2.7.18-r2 should not contain any known vulnerabilities. Of course, this doesn’t mean it’s safe from undiscovered problems.

While at it, I’ve also audited PyPy. Sadly, all current versions of PyPy2.7 were vulnerable to all aforementioned issues, plus partially to CVE-2019-18348 (header injection via hostname, fixed in 2.7.18). PyPy3.6 was even worse, missing 12 fixes from CPython 3.6. All these issues were fixed in Mercurial now, and should be part of 7.3.2 final.

New tools to help with package cleanups

Did you ever have had Croaker shout at you because you removed an old version that just happened to be still required by some other package? Did you have to run your cleanups past (slow-ish) CI just to avoid that? If you did, I have just released app-portage/mgorny-dev-scripts, version 6 that has a tool just for that!
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Is an umbrella organization a good choice for Gentoo?

The talk of joining an umbrella organization and disbanding the Gentoo Foundation (GF) has been recurring over the last years. To the best of my knowledge, even some unofficial talks have been had earlier. However, so far our major obstacle for joining one was the bad standing of the Gentoo Foundation with the IRS. Now that that is hopefully out of the way, we can start actively working towards it.

But why would we want to join an umbrella in the first place? Isn’t having our own dedicated Foundation better? I believe that an umbrella is better for three reasons:

  1. Long-term sustainability. A dedicated professional entity that supports multiple projects has better chances than a small body run by volunteers from the developer community.
  2. Cost efficiency. Less money spent on organizational support, more money for what really matters to Gentoo.
  3. Added value. Umbrellas can offer us services and status that we currently haven’t been able to achieve.

I’ll expand on all three points.
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Why proactively clean Python 2 up?

It seems a recurring complaint that we’re too aggressive on cleaning Python 2 up from packages. Why remove it if (package’s) upstream still supports py2? Why remove it when it still works? Why remove it when somebody’s ready to put some work to keep it working?

I’m pretty sure that you’re aware that Python 2 has finally reached its end-of-life. It’s past its last release, and the current version is most likely vulnerable. We know we can’t remove it entirely just yet (but the clock is ticking!), so why remove its support here and there instead of keeping it some more?
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Gentoo Python Guide

Gentoo provides one of the best frameworks for providing Python support in packages among operating systems. This includes support for running multiple versions of Python (while most other distributions avoid going beyond simultaneous support for Python 2 and one version of Python 3), alternative implementations of Python, reliable tests, deep QA checks. While we aim to keep things simple, this is not always possible.

At the same time, the available documentation is limited and not always up-to-date. Both the built-in eclass documentation and Python project wiki page provide bits of documentation but they are mostly in reference form and not very suitable for beginners nor people who do not actively follow the developments within the ecosystem. This results in suboptimal ebuilds, improper dependencies, missing tests.

Gentoo Python Guide aims to fill the gap by providing a good, complete, by-topic (rather than reference-style) documentation for the ecosystem in Gentoo and the relevant eclasses. Combined with examples, it should help you write good ebuilds and solve common problems as simply as possible.

Gentoo Python Guide sources are available on GitHub. Suggestions and improvements are welcome.