eliminating ".tex" file special case in kpathsea

[kberry]

(Since no one answered my July 1 mail to latex-team, I'll try here.)

Due to LaTeX's ".tex" file, there has always been a special case in kpathsea to allow writing a file named ".tex" (no other dot files are allowed). I'd like to eliminate the special case (for TL25), since nefarious people could in theory use it and most users probably wouldn't think twice about it. It's not technically more of a security issue than being able to write anything, but still, it would be nice to get rid of it for safety and simplicity.

Right now I gather .tex is created in the current directory by
tools.ins: \generate{\file{.tex}{\from{fileerr.dtx}{return}}}. If I change kpathsea, that write will fail.

The simplest way I can think of to handle this is to have the dtx write to a temp file, say tmpdot.tex, and then move it to .tex outside of TeX, as part of making the distribution. If there's some other way to handle it, then great.

wdyt? --thanks, karl.

[davidcarlisle]

sorry the email dropped through the cracks.

Another possibility would be not to generate .tex at all but simply have it included in the source distribution.

[kberry]

Another possibility would be not to generate `.tex` at all but simply have it included in the source distribution. Sure, that sounds simplest of all. I just didn't know if you'd up for having a non-dtx-generated file :). --thanks, karl.

[FrankMittelbach]

Sure, that sounds simplest of all. I just didn't know if you'd up for having a non-dtx-generated file :). --thanks, karl.

CTAN will tell us off for it --- a code file without source ---, but we can refer them to you then :-)

more seriously it probably needs a bit juggling with the set up, but it should be doable, and no it didn't fell through the cracks, at least not here, only I didn't want to address it before Prague, especially not as somebody wants slides in time and I had originally planned for a mindmap talk (my bad I should have realized beforehand that this would become a requirement)

[github-actions]

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[kberry]

Let me just make sure: if I take out the special case allowing ".tex" from kpathsea for the TL25 binaries, you'll adjust latex as needed? Thanks.

[davidcarlisle]

@kberry I think that's the plan although we haven't changed anything yet

[FrankMittelbach]

I guess what needs happening is that we have to put the .tex explicitly on github and make sure that it gets copied into the ctan upload.

In addition we probably have to comment out the extration in the .ins file so that Karl's scripts don't generate an error. However, I would prefer to leave that in the .ins file if possible. Thus, @kberry do you really run the .ins files for the latex format or do you simply use the tds tree we provide?

[davidcarlisle]

@FrankMittelbach if we leave it in it will hit any end users (not just Karl) who run the docstrip on base.
It might be safer to generate something like empty.tex and have l3build (at least) rename it.

[FrankMittelbach]

ah true ... then perhaps the .ins file should contain a \Msg line telling people to rename that file at the OS level manually.
And perhaps the name should be longer, e.g., rename-me-with-empty-base-name.tex after all "empty.tex" is not an unlikely real name.

[FrankMittelbach]

anyway, please sort it out ... I'm intending to have some vacation :-)

[davidcarlisle]

@kberry as far as I can see the restriction on writing "dot files" does not apply to a texlua script calling

os.execute("mv something.tex .tex")

so the pull request #1466 writes something safe from tex and then renames it in the build script (or you would have to rename during texlive integration if not using the supplied tds zip file)

does that sound reasonable?

[kberry]

Indeed, there are no restrictions on texlua (only luatex). Renaming after creation sounds good to me. I do use your (and all non-erroneous) tds.zip's, so it won't make a difference to the TL-updating process. I'll make the change in the kpse code after a latex release is made with this change. There is no hurry at all. Thanks much. -k