Of the use of unpredictableSeed

[Shachar Shemesh via Digitalmars-d]

On 07/03/17 00:19, sarn wrote:
> On Monday, 6 March 2017 at 10:12:09 UTC, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
>> Excuse me if I'm asking a trivial question. Why not just seed it from
>> /dev/urandom? (or equivalent on non-Linux platforms. I know at least
>> Windows has an equivalent).
>>
>> Shachar
>
> One reason is that /dev/urandom isn't always available, e.g., in a
> chroot.  Sure, these are corner cases, but it's annoying when stuff like
> this doesn't "just work".

If I write a program that relies on there being /dev/null, /dev/zero or 
/dev/tty, I don't go ahead and publish this on the program requirements. 
It is okay to assume those are available to me, and if your chroot/LFS 
install doesn't have them and my program breaks, well, tough to be you.

I don't think /dev/urandom is any different in that regard. Worst case, 
you can try to use it, and fall back to whatever it is we're doing today 
if it doesn't work. I don't think the chroot argument is a good one, though.

Shachar