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Did Claude increase bugs in rsync?

alexispurslane.github.io

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Re: Did Claude increase bugs in rsync?

#261

Post by GodelNumbering »

delusional wrote: post #248
scottlamb wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a good example of what slips through LLM attention. It forces all allocations to be calloc as if it is a strict upgrade. I wouldn't assume Claude made that decision; it's not as if that was some incidental thing that it snuck into a large commit. The commit message starts with "zero all new memory from allocations", and that's exactly what the commit does. What do you imagine the prompt was? It seems totall…

You don't really have to guess. The guy told us the AI didn't suggest this specific change: > The change to zero memory was my idea and my change. It was a reaction to a security report I got which caused use of an element past the end of an array. By zeroing the allocation I could ensure that misuse of that memory if a similar bug came up in the future could only cause a null ptr deref, which is better than the chan…

okay I had not read this or any discussions there (except the one linked in the post), but this looks weirder. the comment you linked is a dev responding to what is very clearly a bot comment. I am sure they have good intentions and I have no reason to believe otherwise as I have no connection to the project whatsoever, but the original commit being 4-5 lines long (what did claude do then?) and the revert description is almost certainly written by an LLM makes in my mind the slop argument stronger.

I hope if this doesn't come across as unkind towards the dev who gives their time and energy to the project. Grateful for that.

Re: Did Claude increase bugs in rsync?

#262

Post by jagged-chisel »

delusional wrote: post #248
scottlamb wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a good example of what slips through LLM attention. It forces all allocations to be calloc as if it is a strict upgrade. I wouldn't assume Claude made that decision; it's not as if that was some incidental thing that it snuck into a large commit. The commit message starts with "zero all new memory from allocations", and that's exactly what the commit does. What do you imagine the prompt was? It seems totall…

You don't really have to guess. The guy told us the AI didn't suggest this specific change: > The change to zero memory was my idea and my change. It was a reaction to a security report I got which caused use of an element past the end of an array. By zeroing the allocation I could ensure that misuse of that memory if a similar bug came up in the future could only cause a null ptr deref, which is better than the chan…

> … By zeroing the allocation …

How does that prevent reading past the end of the buffer? Or change how bytes outside the buffer are used? Are these arrays of pointers so that the “null ptr deref” comment makes sense?

Or am I the bozo and don’t know what’s happening here?

Re: Did Claude increase bugs in rsync?

#263

Post by tom_ »

GodelNumbering wrote: post #234

Was just looking at commits and came across a commit and its revert original commit: https://github.com/RsyncProject/rsync/commit/d046525de39315d... ``` - if (!ptr) - ptr = malloc(num * size); - else if (ptr == do_calloc) + if (!ptr || ptr == do_calloc) ptr = calloc(num, size); ``` Written with claude. This is a good example of what slips through LLM attention. It forces all allocations to be calloc as if it is a str…

AI multiplied by Linux overcommit. What times we live in!

(My own view: 10.8 GB is nothing these days. Your sprintf buffers are probably larger than that. (And if they aren't: they should be. That, or you should start using snprintf...))

Re: Did Claude increase bugs in rsync?

#264

Post by nomel »

jarym wrote: post #256

I've been coding for over 2 decades. I love it, I've always loved it and I likely always will. I was an AI skeptic some months ago but truly Claude and Codex have changed my development style and velocity in a way I never imagined would ever be possible. With that, yes, I produce more code and am finding more bugs. So looking over at comments in HN articles the amount of polarising hate to anything produced with AI i…

I've always noticed, within any subject involving tools, there are people who like the tools, and some people who like to use the tools to do something else.

With programming, I've always been in the later: it's a tool that allows me to do what I actually love, which is problem solving, system level thinking, and providing some nice solution to that problem, that happens to be through software.

So, I have an absolute blast with AI, because it helps do the more boring bits. And, seeing my non-programming colleagues get excited to see their vibe coded ideas become reality has been so much fun.

I'm genuinely curious to hear the perspective of someone anti-AI, who works in software. Perhaps the impending doom/skill shift of our profession?

Re: Did Claude increase bugs in rsync?

#265

Post by cobertos »

This post just gives me more questions than answers and I'm unable to form a decision:

* Why was v3.4.1 the most buggy, right before the Claude commits? Why did "nobody notice"? It's way to strange to just say welp, it must be human error. * Why does v3.4.2 have 0 bugs, or 0 bug score. And why was such an outlier (no other commit seemingly has this??) allowed to mix into aggregate statistics and bring all the "is Claude buggy?" scores down. Tbh idk how that _wasn't_ a red flag in the author's analysis...

This article feels like half of an analysis presented as a highly complex finished product due all the advanced stats they're running.

Re: Did Claude increase bugs in rsync?

#266

Post by Joel_Mckay »

jarym wrote: post #256

I've been coding for over 2 decades. I love it, I've always loved it and I likely always will. I was an AI skeptic some months ago but truly Claude and Codex have changed my development style and velocity in a way I never imagined would ever be possible. With that, yes, I produce more code and am finding more bugs. So looking over at comments in HN articles the amount of polarising hate to anything produced with AI i…

LLM are good for context search, and template output.

However, you also get the lowest common salient answer guaranteed, uncopyrightable work (differs from public domain), and potential legal peril from copyright bleed-through.

We are in the golden Napster age of isomorphic plagiarism. =3

Re: Did Claude increase bugs in rsync?

#267

Post by gravypod »

This is a really cool post but I think one metric we may want to also look at is does using agentic coding tools in one domain impact your coding abilities in another domain? A lot of people I know have been talking about getting rusty on the fundamentals recently. This is not something I am particularly feeling as I do a mix of running agents in parallel and writing some code manually where it makes sense. But if people who have been prompt-only at work come home and work on rsync and are more "rusty" maybe that could also lead to more bugs?

This would be even harder to measure.

Re: Did Claude increase bugs in rsync?

#268

Post by 1a527dd5 »

I'm amazed that this is still being discussed.

It's open source, no one is forcing you to use it.

If you don't trust the newer versions; use the old versions.

If you no longer like the maintainer because of reasons, fork it/start your own.

It's not that hard.

Storm in a teacup.

Re: Did Claude increase bugs in rsync?

#269

Post by Joel_Mckay »

nomel wrote: post #264
jarym wrote: post #256

I've been coding for over 2 decades. I love it, I've always loved it and I likely always will. I was an AI skeptic some months ago but truly Claude and Codex have changed my development style and velocity in a way I never imagined would ever be possible. With that, yes, I produce more code and am finding more bugs. So looking over at comments in HN articles the amount of polarising hate to anything produced with AI i…

I've always noticed, within any subject involving tools, there are people who like the tools, and some people who like to use the tools to do something else. With programming, I've always been in the later: it's a tool that allows me to do what I actually love, which is problem solving, system level thinking , and providing some nice solution to that problem, that happens to be through software. So, I have an absolut…

Personally, it would still bother me if some lazy bro hit a code-generator and people end up dead.

For context search, I find LLM quite useful... still wrong 20% of the time... but it has some utility.

Here is a thought experiment: If "AI" will eventually generate your work, than what actual value do you bring to the table? =3

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