Commit Graph
3 Commits
Author SHA1 Message Date
Brad Fitzpatrick 2ee809d10d feature: add TS_DISABLE_FEATURE to disable features at runtime
The ts_omit_<name> build tags omit a feature at build time; there has
been no way to do the same at runtime. Some users (either proactively
or in response to a security announcement) might like a way to disable
a feature that's linked-in in their binaries that they're not using.
Then a mitigation announcement can say "set this env var" without
asking users to rebuild or wait for a new release.

This adds env var TS_DISABLE_FEATURE, a comma-separated list of
feature names to disable, and the listed set is reported by the
debug-optional-features LocalAPI endpoint next to the registered set.
The legacy per-feature knobs such as TS_DISABLE_SSH_SERVER and
TS_DISABLE_TAILDROP keep working independently.

A disabled feature behaves as if it had not been linked: it is absent
from feature.IsRegistered, its hooks are unset, and its extensions and
handlers are not registered. Three pieces make that happen:

  * feature.Register now returns bool, false when disabled, and
    feature packages gate their registration init on it. It was added
    to the feature packages that never called it (including taildrop
    and ssh), which also completes the picture reported by
    debug-optional-features. taildrop, routecheck, favorites, and
    serviceclientprefs had registration split across several inits and
    now register from one gated init.
  * ipnext.RegisterExtension ignores a disabled feature's extension.
  * feature.Hook.Set and feature.Hooks.Add walk the call stack and
    silently skip when the calling package under feature/<name> is
    disabled. This covers sub-packages such as
    feature/captiveportal/netcheckhook, which cannot call Register
    themselves without colliding with their parent, and future
    packages whose authors forget the gate.

ssh/tailssh's registrations moved from its inits into tailssh.Register,
called from feature/ssh's gated init. The aws and kube state stores and
syspolicy's Windows store registration are gated too.

feature/register_disable_test.go runs this test binary as a child
process (it links condregister, as tailscaled does) with
TS_DISABLE_FEATURE set to every registered feature at once, and fails
if any of them register anyway, so a feature that ignores the variable
cannot land.

Updates #12614

Signed-off-by: Brad Fitzpatrick <bradfitz@tailscale.com>
Change-Id: I720af6ccab844ae060a9dfd1539fee577fd483e3
2026-09-15 08:37:47 -07:00
Will Norris 3ec5be3f51 all: remove AUTHORS file and references to it
This file was never truly necessary and has never actually been used in
the history of Tailscale's open source releases.

A Brief History of AUTHORS files
---

The AUTHORS file was a pattern developed at Google, originally for
Chromium, then adopted by Go and a bunch of other projects. The problem
was that Chromium originally had a copyright line only recognizing
Google as the copyright holder. Because Google (and most open source
projects) do not require copyright assignemnt for contributions, each
contributor maintains their copyright. Some large corporate contributors
then tried to add their own name to the copyright line in the LICENSE
file or in file headers. This quickly becomes unwieldy, and puts a
tremendous burden on anyone building on top of Chromium, since the
license requires that they keep all copyright lines intact.

The compromise was to create an AUTHORS file that would list all of the
copyright holders. The LICENSE file and source file headers would then
include that list by reference, listing the copyright holder as "The
Chromium Authors".

This also become cumbersome to simply keep the file up to date with a
high rate of new contributors. Plus it's not always obvious who the
copyright holder is. Sometimes it is the individual making the
contribution, but many times it may be their employer. There is no way
for the proejct maintainer to know.

Eventually, Google changed their policy to no longer recommend trying to
keep the AUTHORS file up to date proactively, and instead to only add to
it when requested: https://opensource.google/docs/releasing/authors.
They are also clear that:

> Adding contributors to the AUTHORS file is entirely within the
> project's discretion and has no implications for copyright ownership.

It was primarily added to appease a small number of large contributors
that insisted that they be recognized as copyright holders (which was
entirely their right to do). But it's not truly necessary, and not even
the most accurate way of identifying contributors and/or copyright
holders.

In practice, we've never added anyone to our AUTHORS file. It only lists
Tailscale, so it's not really serving any purpose. It also causes
confusion because Tailscalars put the "Tailscale Inc & AUTHORS" header
in other open source repos which don't actually have an AUTHORS file, so
it's ambiguous what that means.

Instead, we just acknowledge that the contributors to Tailscale (whoever
they are) are copyright holders for their individual contributions. We
also have the benefit of using the DCO (developercertificate.org) which
provides some additional certification of their right to make the
contribution.

The source file changes were purely mechanical with:

    git ls-files | xargs sed -i -e 's/\(Tailscale Inc &\) AUTHORS/\1 contributors/g'

Updates #cleanup

Change-Id: Ia101a4a3005adb9118051b3416f5a64a4a45987d
Signed-off-by: Will Norris <will@tailscale.com>
2026-01-23 15:49:45 -08:00
Brad Fitzpatrick 68a66ee81b feature/capture: move packet capture to feature/*, out of iOS + CLI
We had the debug packet capture code + Lua dissector in the CLI + the
iOS app. Now we don't, with tests to lock it in.

As a bonus, tailscale.com/net/packet and tailscale.com/net/flowtrack
no longer appear in the CLI's binary either.

A new build tag ts_omit_capture disables the packet capture code and
was added to build_dist.sh's --extra-small mode.

Updates #12614

Change-Id: I79b0628c0d59911bd4d510c732284d97b0160f10
Signed-off-by: Brad Fitzpatrick <bradfitz@tailscale.com>
2025-01-24 17:52:43 -08:00