Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/2] wrapper: add a helper to generate numbers from a CSPRNG

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2021 23:39:08 -0800

"brian m. carlson" <[email-masked]> writes:

> Finally, add a self-test option here to make sure that our buffer
> handling is correct and we aren't truncating data.  We simply read 64
> KiB and then make sure we've seen each byte.  The probability of this
> test failing spuriously is less than 10^-100.

I saw that 10^-100 math in the other message, and have no problem
with that, but I am not sure how such a test makes "sure that our
buffer handling is correct and we aren't truncating data."  If you
thought you are generate 64kiB of random bytes but a bug caused you
to actually use 32kiB of random bytes with 32kiB of other garbage,
wouldn't you still have enough entropy left that you would be likely
to paint all 256 buckets?

I also agree with Peff's comment about making these look as if many
of them can be specified at once, when only one of them would
actually be in effect.  Giving one Makefile macro that the builder
can set to a single value would be much less confusing.

Thanks.