RFC: Removing file(1)+libmagic(3) from the base system

[M. Warner Losh]

In message: <46553A6B.7070904 at freebsd.org>
            Colin Percival <cperciva at freebsd.org> writes:
: > I guess I fail to see how this is any different than the .gz bugs that
: > were found a while ago.  Nobody suggested removing .gz from the tree
: > because a few bugs were found.  Everybody suggested updating right
: > away to fix those bugs.  File is no different, and really should
: > remain in the tree.
: 
: Deflate is one file format which is used quite often.  File parses several
: different formats, including several which are not tested often (i.e., have
: a much higher chance of including parse bugs).

Now you are really reaching...  File does it work by reading in meta
data (in one format, well tested) that describes how to parse the
files using a simple meta-language to describe offsets.  I think you
are really reaching here, unless you can show some conclusive evidence
to support that this can cause problems (apart from core dumps from
memory exhaustion, and the like).  Can you point to one of the magic
meta files that has a description so complex that it will likely cause
these kinds of things to happen?

Warner