template: allow & in arg string

[tschettervictor]

#412

The PR will make sure an escape character \ is added in front of the & character in 'arg' string ONLY if it is escaped like "\&".

It fixes #412, but I'm not sure if it will break something else down the road. It shouldn't as it only looks for \& and makes sure it stays that way.

@michael-o
@tobiastom

[tschettervictor]

As long as the "&" is escaped like \& it will treat it literally now. But if it is on its own like "&" then it will treat it like a special character.

This is the Bastille file I'm using.

ARG NAME

CMD echo "My name is ${NAME}" > /root/my-name
CMD "cat /root/my-name

With --arg NAME="me \& you"

[michael-o]

The question is how to properly document that for the user since it is not obvious that you have to pass "\&". I not 100% convinced that it is an ideal solution. How is the user supposed to know that this goes through sed?

[tschettervictor]

Good point.

I think personally it should be a general point that if we are using special characters (anywhere) we need to try to escape them.

This keeps things lined up with the rest of the BSD world/code for the most part.

The other question is, Is there ever a time when the user will want to use the "specialness" of that character? And if they do, we definitely need to have a way to do both, and escaping it is the best option. IMO.

[tschettervictor]

How so?

All it does is add one additional clans to the "parse_arg_value" function.

And that is, if it finds \&, it will make sure it stays.

[bmac2]

ok I am good with it.

[tschettervictor]

I've added docs saying that it needs to be escaped if it is to be treated literally.

The question is, does it work for you?

[michael-o]

I have now tried the following:

bastille template deblndw013x4j dw/base-complete \
  --arg LOCALE="en_GB.UTF-8" \
  --arg ROOT_FULLNAME="Michael '\\&' Osipov" \
  --arg ROOT_AUTHORIZED_KEYS=/var/tmp/deblndw013x4j/authorized_keys \
  --arg ROOT_K5LOGIN=/var/tmp/deblndw013x4j/k5login \
  --arg ROOT_FORWARD=/var/tmp/deblndw013x4j/forward \
  --arg INSTALL_SOFTWARE_FROM="packages"

It does not work:

# finger root
Login: root                             Name: Michael '' Osipov
Directory: /root                        Shell: /bin/sh
On since Thu 16 Jan 10:10 (CET) on pts/1
No Mail.
No Plan.

I also need to note that ROOT_FULLNAME is passed to another template first:
From base-complete:

...
ARG ROOT_FULLNAME
ARG ROOT_AUTHORIZED_KEYS
ARG ROOT_K5LOGIN
ARG ROOT_FORWARD
ARG INSTALL_SOFTWARE_FROM="packages"

CMD echo "Starting base jail configuration"
...
INCLUDE dw/root-config --arg FULLNAME="${ROOT_FULLNAME}" --arg AUTHORIZED_KEYS="${ROOT_AUTHORIZED_KEYS}" --arg K5LOGIN="${ROOT_K5LOGIN}" --arg FORWARD="${ROOT_FORWARD}"
CMD touch /etc/.base-complete
CMD echo "Base jail complete"

and root-config contains:

...
CMD pw usermod root -c "${FULLNAME}"
...

[tschettervictor]

You are escaping it twice there. It should only be escaped once, and without the single quotes.