Feature #10510: Remove REXML instead of patching it

• Status: Closed
• Assignee: kou (Kouhei Sutou)
• Target version: -

[grosser (Michael Grosser)]

There have been at least 3 rexml vulerabilities to date,
having to patch ruby just to make sure it's not being used is taking a lot
of time/effort.

Afaik most people do not use xml anyway (and especially not rexml), just
for comparison: it would make much more sense to have json included, but
it's not.

So let's just drop it & make it a gem.

[sferik (Erik Michaels-Ober)]

I believe semantic versioning prevents doing this until Ruby 3 is released (many years from now) but I agree that this issue should be added to the Ruby 3 roadmap.

[luislavena (Luis Lavena)]

What about gem-ification of rexml and allow patches be distributed as gems that can be updated?

(like default gems: json, psych, etc)

I think the introduction of default gem for rexml falls into minor version changes and will allow faster responses and alternate upgrade/mitigation paths.

[yb601 (Iain Barnett)]

Erik Michaels-Ober wrote:

I believe semantic versioning prevents doing this until Ruby 3 is released (many years from now) but I agree that this issue should be added to the Ruby 3 roadmap.

Wedding release schedules to specific version numbers is what got Perl in such a mess. Shouldn't the version numbers follow what happens in the code and not the other way round? If a change means the version number goes up to 3 then so what! The other stuff that would've been in 3 goes in 4… or 5 or 6.

+1 from me either for the original idea or Luis' idea.

iain

[hsbt (Hiroshi SHIBATA)]

• Status changed from Open to Assigned
• Assignee set to kou (Kouhei Sutou)

[hsbt (Hiroshi SHIBATA)]

• Status changed from Assigned to Closed

rexml is the bundled gems since Ruby 3.0.