[fpc-pascal] Remote FreePascal compile service, feedback requested

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Mon, 5 Dec 2005, Tom Verhoeff wrote:

> We (still) use FreePascal quite a bit in our first/second-year education,
> in particular, in <PEACH.win.tue.nl>, our Programming Education And
> Contest Hosting verification system.
>
> I was thinking of adding a remote FreePascal service along the following
> lines.  You go to its web interface, browse for your source files
> (possibly a whole zip archive) on your local machine, enter command-line
> options, and let our server compile your stuff with a (selectable)
> version of fpc (under Linux), then you get back the results (possibly
> also in a zip archive).  Mabye we can support cross compiles as well.
>
> Why do this?  Because that way people can use/try FreePascal without
> installing anything.
>
> Furthermore, we plan to support several versions of FreePascal in
> parallel.  That way, it may also be useful to the FreePascal community.
> E.g. when diagnosing a problem.
>
> Here are some questions:
>
>  1.  Do you think this service would be useful?
>
>  2.  Do you think the interface described above is good enough?
>      Suggestions for refinements would be appreciated.
>
>  3.  Are there any security risks that we may have overlooked?
>      Of course, we will impose certain limitation to avoid resource
>      hogging.  But maybe there are ways to put together a malicious
>      source file that makes the compiler misbehave ...
>
>  4.  Whatever else comes to your mind ...

Don't make all distributed units available, and forbid the use of some
units. You don't want people opening an FTP socket and download 24G on
your machine.

Even then, people could create a unit that makes direct kernel calls, or
link to C. I would disallow use of the external keyword, {$L} and {$Linklib }
statements in sources. So you'll definitely need some preprocessing.

Michael.