[Bug 1644048] Re: builtins/help.def: Passes ngettext() result to printf() as format string

[Mathew Hodson]

** Tags added: ftbfs

** Changed in: bash (Ubuntu Trusty)
   Importance: Undecided => High

** Changed in: bash (Ubuntu)
   Importance: Undecided => High

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1644048

Title:
  builtins/help.def: Passes ngettext() result to printf() as format
  string

Status in bash package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed
Status in bash source package in Trusty:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  [Impact]
  Breaks build on arm64 in trusty:

  ../.././builtins/../.././builtins/help.def:130:7: error: format not a
  string literal and no format arguments [-Werror=format-security]

  [Test case]
  Check it builds

  [Regression potential]
  Indefinitely low. All we do is add
    "%s",
  between printf( and ngettext(...

  [Other info]
  The same code works fine on all other architectures and newer releases, but it seems broken anyway: We are passing the return value of ngettext() to printf() as the format string, which is unsafe.

  We should evaluate why that works elsewhere and probably also do the
  same fix in other branches, but I'll leave that to someone else to
  decide. My intention here is to just get the trusty SRU for bug
  1644048 building on all platforms.

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