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I found a bug in the .NET framework and fixed it by hand-altering the DLL

blog.nullspace.io

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Re: I found a bug in the .NET framework and fixed it by hand-altering the DLL

#21

Post by daxelrod »

antics wrote: post #9
skrebbel wrote: post #7

The real news here is that this is considered special. In most other languages, they'd have forked the source, fixed it, recompiled it for their own uses and submitted a pull request or patch. I'm a big .NET fan, but the fact that we have to jump through such hoops to find and fix a bug, and then still have near certainty that we're going to have to reapply the patch for many updates to come, well, that's just a bit…

---Author here--- I should disclose that I actually work for Microsoft, and still chose the hard way. Fuck the police!

Out of curiosity, would you have been able to read the actual source if you wanted?

Re: I found a bug in the .NET framework and fixed it by hand-altering the DLL

#22

Post by mrb »

skrebbel wrote: post #7

The real news here is that this is considered special. In most other languages, they'd have forked the source, fixed it, recompiled it for their own uses and submitted a pull request or patch. I'm a big .NET fan, but the fact that we have to jump through such hoops to find and fix a bug, and then still have near certainty that we're going to have to reapply the patch for many updates to come, well, that's just a bit…

Regarding open-sourcing .NET: did Microsoft not precisely do this (at least some of its components)? http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2014/04/03/microsoft-cloud/

Re: I found a bug in the .NET framework and fixed it by hand-altering the DLL

#25

Post by guelo »

skrebbel wrote: post #7

The real news here is that this is considered special. In most other languages, they'd have forked the source, fixed it, recompiled it for their own uses and submitted a pull request or patch. I'm a big .NET fan, but the fact that we have to jump through such hoops to find and fix a bug, and then still have near certainty that we're going to have to reapply the patch for many updates to come, well, that's just a bit…

I've very rarely heard of shops running forked, re-compiled runtimes for languages like python or ruby.

Normally if you find a bug in the core you might try to monkeypatch but many times that won't work so you have to suck it up and just work around it.

Re: I found a bug in the .NET framework and fixed it by hand-altering the DLL

#26

Post by stusmall »

colanderman wrote: post #13

I did this once with GCC. "But GCC's open source!" you say. Well, GCC is next-to-impossible to compile for a target other than the host, especially if the target isn't x86 or ARM; and GCC maintainers insist on precise test cases to vet a bug, even if the issue is immediately obvious from reading the source code and the bug only occurs in certain very complex situations. (/me looks forward to the day Clang/LLVM become…

Cross-compiling and Canadian-cross isn't fun but isn't that bad. There are good projects out there to help in the process. http://crosstool-ng.org/ is a good project that can make it much easier. They have Canadian-cross support but I haven't used it.

Re: I found a bug in the .NET framework and fixed it by hand-altering the DLL

#27

Post by Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 »

daxelrod wrote: post #21
antics wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

---Author here--- I should disclose that I actually work for Microsoft, and still chose the hard way. Fuck the police!

Out of curiosity, would you have been able to read the actual source if you wanted?

Microsoft already publishes the source code for the .net framework (and I think other projects like asp.net and mvc) at referencesource.microsoft.com

Re: I found a bug in the .NET framework and fixed it by hand-altering the DLL

#28

Post by blibble »

jameshart wrote: post #14
skrebbel wrote: post #7

The real news here is that this is considered special. In most other languages, they'd have forked the source, fixed it, recompiled it for their own uses and submitted a pull request or patch. I'm a big .NET fan, but the fact that we have to jump through such hoops to find and fix a bug, and then still have near certainty that we're going to have to reapply the patch for many updates to come, well, that's just a bit…

What they're doing here is monkeypatching the language runtime. That's not trivial in most languages, least of all ones which typically rely on a centralized install of that language runtime to function. The way they did this, only the program that needs this fix is actually using their monkeypatched Expressions library; other code on the same system - other libraries in the same application, even - will continue to…

no they aren't.

monkey patching refers to dynamic modifications of code/behaviour at runtime.

this is simply editing a file on the disk, which people cracking software have been doing for about 30 years (using exactly the same method).

Re: I found a bug in the .NET framework and fixed it by hand-altering the DLL

#29

Post by Scuttles »

wwwwwwwwww wrote: post #18
Alupis wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and still chose the hard way Chose? Unless you work on the team that made that DLL, it's likely you'd be jumping through hoops even internally.

i'm glad someone who works at the company like you was able to enlighten us as to microsoft's internal practices oh wait

If you pay any attention to Microsoft, their business practices, news, reports, blogs, etc... then you would know the parent comment is pretty much spot on.

Re: I found a bug in the .NET framework and fixed it by hand-altering the DLL

#30

Post by nick2021 »

antics wrote: post #9
skrebbel wrote: post #7

The real news here is that this is considered special. In most other languages, they'd have forked the source, fixed it, recompiled it for their own uses and submitted a pull request or patch. I'm a big .NET fan, but the fact that we have to jump through such hoops to find and fix a bug, and then still have near certainty that we're going to have to reapply the patch for many updates to come, well, that's just a bit…

---Author here--- I should disclose that I actually work for Microsoft, and still chose the hard way. Fuck the police!

I think you need to get out and start talking to girls. The way in which you speak/type is really immature. (Yes I saw your other comment that is now deleted from the article).
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