Add warning when PATH env separator is in project path by RyanAD · Pull Request #11318 · rust-lang/cargo

RyanAD · 2022-11-01T00:30:36Z

Adds a check during cargo init and cargo new to check if the path contains an invalid PATH character (:, ;, or "). These characters can break things in various ways (including cargo test). These characters are not valid in certain environment variables and cannot be escaped.

For more information see:
https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/blob/7feb003882ecf7699e6705b537673e20985accff/library/std/src/sys/unix/os.rs#L233
https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man8/ld.so.8.html
https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/V1_chap08.html
https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/env/fn.join_paths.html#errors

To test cargo new and cargo init:
cargo new --name testing test:ing
mkdir test:ing2 && cd 'test:ing2' && cargo init --name testing

To test the updated error message when in a directory with invalid characters:
cargo new testing3 && mv testing3 test:ing3 && cd 'test:ing3' && cargo test

cc @weihanglo

rustbot · 2022-11-01T00:30:42Z

Thanks for the pull request, and welcome! The Rust team is excited to review your changes, and you should hear from @epage (or someone else) soon.

Please see the contribution instructions for more information.

weihanglo

Thanks for the contribution!

crates/cargo-util/src/paths.rs

tests/testsuite/init/path_contains_separator/in/test:ing/mod.rs

crates/cargo-util/src/paths.rs

ChrisDenton · 2022-11-01T14:52:00Z

How does this work on Windows? The : character is highly likely to be in the PATH variable (it's the drive separator). And ; can be escaped with double quotes ("). Although admittedly not all applications handle that.

RyanAD · 2022-11-03T01:28:12Z

How does this work on Windows? The : character is highly likely to be in the PATH variable (it's the drive separator). And ; can be escaped with double quotes ("). Although admittedly not all applications handle that.

Fair question. I don't typically use Windows, let me set up a VM and do some testing and validation.

ChrisDenton · 2022-11-03T09:32:20Z

Looking at the CI failure, I'd also add that : isn't valid in a NTFS file name (and should be avoided in other Windows filesystems). It's used as:

The drive separator (e.g. C:\path\to\file)
The NTFS stream separator. So test:ing is the data stream called ing on the file called test

A normal file or directory with a : in the name cannot (or at least should not) occur. Therefore including such a file name in the repo makes it uncloneable on Windows.

weihanglo · 2022-11-03T09:33:38Z

How does this work on Windows? The : character is highly likely to be in the PATH variable (it's the drive separator). And ; can be escaped with double quotes ("). Although admittedly not all applications handle that.

Thank you for pointing it out! It was my bad providing an imprecise demo error message 🙇🏾‍♂️. We definitely can have : or ; as a separator for the whole $PATH variable, but not for a single item of $PATH. See my previous comment #3736 (comment) about why (semi)colon might be illegal on Unix for Cargo.

IIUC, : is an illegal character on Windows for paths¹. And you're correct. On Windows ; is legal when escaped. Here is my overall observation (not yet verified 😆 ) :

	Unix	Windows
`"`	✅	❌ ¹
`:`	❌²	❌ ¹
`;`	❌³	✅

To continue, I'd suggest diverging check_path by each platform accordingly, and polish the message a bit.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/win32/fileio/naming-a-file#naming-conventions ↩ ↩² ↩³
It's totally legal to construct file path with a colon, but it's not legal to used in either $PATH or $LD_LIBRARY_PATH ↩
Same as : though std::env::join_paths doesn't check this. It is only manpage of ld.so saying so. Not sure about the consequence of including a semicolon in $LD_LIBRARY_PATH. ↩

ChrisDenton · 2022-11-03T09:51:51Z

When handling PATH on Windows, I'd say that the only disallowed character is ". Because that's unencodable in the PATH environment variable. Everything else is fine. Whether or not a character is allowed in a file name should be considered a separate concern.

weihanglo · 2022-11-03T10:03:19Z

You're right! If : or any character is inherently impossible to construct a path on a certain platform, then we may not need to warn for it.

FWIW, the situation has been improved over time, as the original issue is quite old and std::env::join_paths now has a different algorithm on each platform.

RyanAD · 2022-11-05T20:41:37Z

How does this work on Windows? The : character is highly likely to be in the PATH variable (it's the drive separator). And ; can be escaped with double quotes ("). Although admittedly not all applications handle that.

Thank you for pointing it out! It was my bad providing an imprecise demo error message 🙇🏾‍♂️. We definitely can have : or ; as a separator for the whole $PATH variable, but not for a single item of $PATH. See my previous comment #3736 (comment) about why (semi)colon might be illegal on Unix for Cargo.

IIUC, : is an illegal character on Windows for paths1. And you're correct. On Windows ; is legal when escaped. Here is my overall observation (not yet verified 😆 ) :
Unix Windows
" ✅ ❌ 1
: ❌2 ❌ 1
; ❌3 ✅

To continue, I'd suggest diverging check_path by each platform accordingly, and polish the message a bit.

Considering the differences in existing platforms, instead of diverging check_path by platform, what do you think about having it make a call to paths::join_paths, and if that fails showing the warning then? That keeps the platform specific pieces in one location. Something like this:
paths::join_paths(slice::from_ref(&OsStr::new(path)), "")... // handle Error and print warning

weihanglo · 2022-11-05T21:20:57Z

Considering the differences in existing platforms, instead of diverging check_path by platform, what do you think about having it make a call to paths::join_paths, and if that fails showing the warning then? That keeps the platform specific pieces in one location. Something like this:
paths::join_paths(slice::from_ref(&OsStr::new(path)), "")... // handle Error and print warning

@RyanAD Sounds like a good idea! Just remember to add a comment explaining why does that.

RyanAD · 2022-11-10T01:32:46Z

@weihanglo @ChrisDenton When you get a chance, here is an updated PR. I didn't add any tests for Windows because I couldn't consistently create a paths with invalid characters. I could set an ENV manually but that wasn't really the point of testing cargo new and cargo init. In any case, now that this just delegates to paths::join_paths I think the unix tests should be sufficient to show that the error is caught and a warning is shown.

The last remaining item is a test for paths::join_paths, I asked for clarity here: #11318 (comment)

ChrisDenton · 2022-11-10T04:59:13Z

Looks good to me. I guess you could add the reverse test for Windows, i.e. that it doesn't spuriously warn about \, ; or :.

weihanglo

Thank you for the update! The rest looks good to me.

crates/cargo-util/src/paths.rs

epage · 2022-11-10T16:00:07Z

r? weihanglo

since you've already been reviewing this (thanks!)

bors · 2022-11-11T04:46:14Z

☔ The latest upstream changes (presumably #11321) made this pull request unmergeable. Please resolve the merge conflicts.

weihanglo

Looks great! Thank @RyanAD for the contributions, and @ChrisDenton for the expert knowledge of Windows platform!

weihanglo · 2022-11-13T09:16:06Z

@bors r+

bors · 2022-11-13T09:16:08Z

📌 Commit eb8d3e2 has been approved by weihanglo

It is now in the queue for this repository.

bors · 2022-11-13T09:16:14Z

⌛ Testing commit eb8d3e2 with merge 64e46b0...

bors · 2022-11-13T10:16:53Z

☀️ Test successful - checks-actions
Approved by: weihanglo
Pushing 64e46b0 to master...

5 commits in a3dfea71ca0c888a88111086898aa833c291d497..16b097879b6f117c8ae698aab054c87f26ff325e 2022-11-11 03:50:47 +0000 to 2022-11-14 23:28:16 +0000 - improve error message for cargo add/remove (rust-lang/cargo#11375) - Bump crate versions of `cargo-util` and `crates-io` (rust-lang/cargo#11369) - doc(changelog): suggestions of cargo fix are nightly only (rust-lang/cargo#11373) - Add warning when PATH env separator is in project path (rust-lang/cargo#11318) - Fix git2 safe-directory disable (rust-lang/cargo#11366)

Update cargo 5 commits in a3dfea71ca0c888a88111086898aa833c291d497..16b097879b6f117c8ae698aab054c87f26ff325e 2022-11-11 03:50:47 +0000 to 2022-11-14 23:28:16 +0000 - improve error message for cargo add/remove (rust-lang/cargo#11375) - Bump crate versions of `cargo-util` and `crates-io` (rust-lang/cargo#11369) - doc(changelog): suggestions of cargo fix are nightly only (rust-lang/cargo#11373) - Add warning when PATH env separator is in project path (rust-lang/cargo#11318) - Fix git2 safe-directory disable (rust-lang/cargo#11366) r? `@ghost`

rustbot assigned epage Nov 1, 2022

rustbot added the S-waiting-on-review Status: Awaiting review from the assignee but also interested parties. label Nov 1, 2022

weihanglo reviewed Nov 1, 2022

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weihanglo reviewed Nov 10, 2022

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rustbot assigned weihanglo and unassigned epage Nov 10, 2022

RyanAD added 5 commits November 12, 2022 18:43

Warn if project path contains an invalid PATH env character

82a92a2

Improve error message in join_paths when env contains a path separator

23c1a51

make call to paths::join_paths and warn if path contains invalid chars

730e8ca

keep empty test directory

f1fed1b

simplify join_paths error message and add test

eb8d3e2

RyanAD force-pushed the 3736-improve-invalid-char-error branch from 969ea02 to eb8d3e2 Compare November 13, 2022 01:46

weihanglo approved these changes Nov 13, 2022

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bors added S-waiting-on-bors Status: Waiting on bors to run and complete tests. Bors will change the label on completion. and removed S-waiting-on-review Status: Awaiting review from the assignee but also interested parties. labels Nov 13, 2022

bors merged commit 64e46b0 into rust-lang:master Nov 13, 2022

weihanglo mentioned this pull request Nov 16, 2022

Update cargo rust-lang/rust#104468

Merged

ehuss added this to the 1.67.0 milestone Dec 30, 2022

Gankra mentioned this pull request Mar 21, 2025

Eagerly warn/error when a project is under a path with : (because unix will cry when you put it on PATH) astral-sh/uv#8983

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