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441 points longcat | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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f311a ◴[] No.45038992[source]
People really need to start thinking twice when adding a new dependency. So many supply chain attacks this year.

This week, I needed to add a progress bar with 8 stats counters to my Go project. I looked at the libraries, and they all had 3000+ lines of code. I asked LLM to write me a simple progress report tracking UI, and it was less than 150 lines. It works as expected, no dependencies needed. It's extremely simple, and everyone can understand the code. It just clears the terminal output and redraws it every second. It is also thread-safe. Took me 25 minutes to integrate it and review the code.

If you don't need a complex stats counter, a simple progress bar is like 30 lines of code as well.

This is a way to go for me now when considering another dependency. We don't have the resources to audit every package update.

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coldpie ◴[] No.45039464[source]
> People really need to start thinking twice when adding a new dependency. So many supply chain attacks this year.

I was really nervous when "language package managers" started to catch on. I work in the systems programming world, not the web world, so for the past decade, I looked from a distance at stuff like pip and npm and whatever with kind of a questionable side-eye. But when I did a Rust project and saw how trivially easy it was to pull in dozens of completely un-reviewed dependencies from the Internet with Cargo via a single line in a config file, I knew we were in for a bad time. Sure enough. This is a bad direction, and we need to turn back now. (We won't. There is no such thing as computer security.)

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rootnod3 ◴[] No.45039683[source]
Fully agree. That is why I vendor all my dependencies. On the common lisp side a new tool emerged a while ago for that[1].

On top of that, I try to keep the dependencies to an absolute minimum. In my current project it's 15 dependencies, including the sub-dependencies.

[1]: https://github.com/fosskers/vend

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skydhash ◴[] No.45039849[source]
Vendoring is nice. Using the system version is nicer. If you can’t run on $current_debian, that’s very much a you problem. If postgres and nginx can do it, you can too.
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1. rootnod3 ◴[] No.45040065[source]
But that would lock me in to say whatever $debian provides. And some dependencies only exist as source because they are not packaged for $distribution.

Of course, if possible, just saying "hey, I need these dependencies from the system" is nicer, but also not error-free. If a system suddenly uses an older or newer version of a dependency, you might also run into trouble.

In either case, you run into either an a) trust problem or b) a maintenance problem. And in that scenario I tend to prefer option b), at least I know exactly whom to blame and who is in charge of fixing it: me.

Also comes down to the language I guess. Common Lisp has a tendency to use source packages anyway.

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2. skydhash ◴[] No.45042560[source]
> If a system suddenly uses an older or newer version of a dependency, you might also run into trouble.

You won't. The user may. On his system.

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3. rootnod3 ◴[] No.45054166[source]
Aware of that. So how is that different from any other Debian package? If you rely on a certain set of packages, you are always at the end at fault. You either trust a certain base or you vet it.